III. EUROPEAN POLITICS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY…

III. EUROPEAN POLITICS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

THE EMPEROR CHARLES V

As we look back upon the confused sixteenth century, we are struck at once by two commanding figures,--the Emperor Charles V [Footnote: Charles I of Spain.] and his son Philip II,--about whom we may group most of the political events of the period. The father occupies the center of the stage during the first half of the century; the son, during the second half.

[Sidenote: Extensive Dominions of Charles]

At Ghent in the Netherlands, Charles was born in 1500 of illustrious parentage. His father was Philip of Habsburg, son of the Emperor Maximilian and Mary, duchess of Burgundy. His mother was the Infanta Joanna, daughter and heiress of Ferdinand of Aragon and Naples and Isabella of Castile and the Indies. The death of his father and the incapacity of his mother--she had become insane--left Charles at the tender age of six years an orphan under the guardianship of his grandfathers Maximilian and Ferdinand. The death of the latter in 1516 transferred the whole Spanish inheritance to Charles, and three years later, by the death of the former, he came into possession of the hereditary dominions of the Habsburgs. Thus under a youth of nineteen years were grouped wider lands and greater populations than any Christian sovereign had ever ruled. Vienna, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, Milan, Naples, Madrid, Cadiz,--even the City of Mexico,--owed him allegiance. His titles alone would fill several pages.

Maximilian had intended not only that all these lands should pass into the hands of the Habsburg family, but also that his grandson should succeed him as head of the Holy Roman Empire. This ambition, however, was hard of fulfillment, because the French king, Francis I (1515- 1547), feared the encircling of his own country by a united German- Spanish-Italian state, and set himself to preserve what he called the "Balance of Power"--preventing the undue growth of one political power at the expense of others. It was only by means of appeal to national and family sentiment and the most wholesale bribery that Charles managed to secure a majority of the electors' votes against his French rival [Footnote: Henry VIII of England was also a candidate.] and thereby to acquire the coveted imperial title. He was crowned at Aix- la-Chapelle in his twenty-first year.

[Sidenote: Character of Charles]

Never have greater difficulties confronted a sovereign than those which Charles V was obliged to face throughout his reign; never did monarch lead a more strenuous life. He was the central figure in a very critical period of history: his own character as well as the painstaking education he had received in the Netherlands conferred upon him a lively appreciation of his position and a dogged pertinacity in discharging its obligations. Both in administering his extensive dominions and in dealing with foreign foes, Charles was a zealous, hard-working, and calculating prince, and the lack of success which attended many of his projects was due not to want of ability in the ruler but to the multiplicity of interests among the ruled. The emperor must do too many things to allow of his doing any one thing well.

[Sidenote: Difficulties Confronting Charles]

Suppose we turn over in our minds some of the chief problems of Charles V, for they will serve to explain much of the political history of the sixteenth century. In the first place, the emperor was confronted with extraordinary difficulties in governing his territories. Each one of the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands--the country which he always considered peculiarly his own--was a distinct political unit, for there existed only the rudiments of a central administration and a common representative system, while the county of Burgundy had a separate political organization. The crown of Castile brought with it the recently conquered kingdom of Granada, together with the new colonies in America and scattered posts in northern Africa. The crown of Aragon comprised the four distinct states of Aragon, Valencia, Catalonia, and Navarre, [Footnote: The part south of the Pyrenees. See above, p. 8.] and, in addition, the kingdoms of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, each with its own customs and government. At least eight independent cortes or parliaments existed in this Spanish-Italian group, adding greatly to the intricacy of administration. Much the same was true of that other Habsburg group of states,--Austria, Styria, Carniola, Carinthia, the Tyrol, etc., but Charles soon freed himself from immediate responsibility for their government by intrusting them (1521) to his younger brother, Ferdinand, who by his own marriage and elections added the kingdoms of Bohemia [Footnote: Including the Bohemian crown lands of Moravia and Silesia.] and Hungary (1526) to the Habsburg dominions. The Empire afforded additional problems: it made serious demands upon the time, money, and energies of its ruler; in return, it gave little but glamour. In all these regions Charles had to do with financial, judicial, and ecclesiastical matters. He had to reconcile conflicting interests and appeal for popularity to many varied races. More than once during his reign he even had to repress rebellion. In Germany, from his very first Diet in 1521, he was face to face with rising Protestantism which seemed to him to blaspheme his altar and to assail his throne.

The emperor's overwhelming administrative difficulties were complicated at every turn by the intricacies of foreign politics. In the first place, Charles was obliged to wage war with France throughout the greater part of his reign; he had inherited a longstanding quarrel with the French kings, to which the rivalry of Francis I for the empire gave a personal aspect. In the second place, and almost as formidable, was the advance of the Turks up the Danube and the increase of Mohammedan naval power in the Mediterranean. Against Protestant Germany a Catholic monarch might hope to rely on papal assistance, and English support might conceivably be enlisted against France. But the popes, who usually disliked the emperor's Italian policy, were not of great aid to him elsewhere; and the English sovereigns had domestic reasons for developing hostility to Charles. A brief sketch of the foreign affairs of Charles may make the situation clear.

[Sidenote: Francis I of France and the Reasons for his Wars with the Emperor Charles V]

Six years older than Charles, Francis I had succeeded to the French throne in 1515, irresponsible, frivolous, and vain of military reputation. The general political situation of the time,--the gradual inclosure of the French monarchy by a string of Habsburg territories,-- to say nothing of the remarkable contrast between the character of Francis and that of the persevering Charles, made a great conflict inevitable, and definite pretexts were not lacking for an early outbreak of hostilities. (1) Francis revived the claims of the French crown to Naples, although Louis XII had renounced them in 1504. (2) Francis, bent on regaining Milan, which his predecessor had lost in 1512, invaded the duchy and, after winning the brilliant victory of Marignano in the first year of his reign, occupied the city of Milan. Charles subsequently insisted, however, that the duchy was a fief of the Holy Roman Empire and that he was sworn by oath to recover it. (3) Francis asserted the claims of a kinsman to the little kingdom of Navarre, the greater part of which, it will be remembered, had recently [Footnote: In 1512. See above.] been forcibly annexed to Spain. (4) Francis desired to extend his sway over the rich French-speaking provinces of the Netherlands, while Charles was determined not only to prevent further aggressions but to recover the duchy of Burgundy of which his grandmother had been deprived by Louis XI. (5) The outcome of the contest for the imperial crown in 1519 virtually completed the breach between the two rivals. War broke out in 1521, and with few interruptions it was destined to outlast the lives of both Francis and Charles.

[Sidenote: The Italian Wars of Charles V and Francis I]

Italy was the main theater of the combat. In the first stage, the imperial forces, with the aid of a papal army, speedily drove the French garrison out of Milan. The Sforza family was duly invested with the duchy as a fief of the Empire, and the pope was compensated by the addition of Parma and Piacenza to the Patrimony of Saint Peter. The victorious Imperialists then pressed across the Alps and besieged Marseilles. Francis, who had been detained by domestic troubles in France, [Footnote: These troubles related to the disposition of the important landed estates of the Bourbon family. The duke of Bourbon, who was constable of France, felt himself injured by the king and accordingly deserted to the emperor.] now succeeded in raising the siege and pursued the retreating enemy to Milan. Instead of following up his advantage by promptly attacking the main army of the Imperialists, the French king dispatched a part of his force to Naples, and with the other turned aside to blockade the city of Pavia. This blunder enabled the Imperialists to reform their ranks and to march towards Pavia in order to join the besieged. Here on 24 February, 1525,--the emperor's twenty-fifth birthday,--the army of Charles won an overwhelming victory. Eight thousand French soldiers fell on the field that day, and Francis, who had been in the thick of the fight, was compelled to surrender. "No thing in the world is left me save my honor and my life," wrote the king to his mother. Everything seemed auspicious for the cause of Charles. Francis, after a brief captivity in Spain, was released on condition that he would surrender all claims to Burgundy, the Netherlands, and Italy, and would marry the emperor's sister.

[Sidenote: The Sack of Rome, 1527]

Francis swore upon the Gospels and upon his knightly word that he would fulfill these conditions, but in his own and contemporary opinion the compulsion exercised upon him absolved him from his oath. No sooner was he back in France than he declared the treaty null and void and proceeded to form alliances with all the Italian powers that had become alarmed by the sudden strengthening of the emperor's position in the peninsula,--the pope, Venice, Florence, and even the Sforza who owed everything to Charles. Upon the resumption of hostilities the league displayed the same want of agreement and energy which characterized every coalition of Italian city-states; and soon the Imperialists were able to possess themselves of much of the country. In 1527 occurred a famous episode--the sack of Rome. It was not displeasing to the emperor that the pope should be punished for giving aid to France, although Charles cannot be held altogether responsible for what befell. His army in Italy, composed largely of Spaniards and Germans, being short of food and money, and without orders, mutinied and marched upon the Eternal City, which was soon at their mercy. About four thousand people perished in the capture. The pillage lasted nine months, and the brigands were halted only by a frightful pestilence which decimated their numbers. Convents were forced, altars stripped, tombs profaned, the library of the Vatican sacked, and works of art torn down as monuments of idolatry. Pope Clement VII (1523-1534), a nephew of the other Medici pope, Leo X, had taken refuge in the impregnable castle of St. Angelo and was now obliged to make peace with the emperor.

[Sidenote: Peace of Cambrai, 1529]

The sack of Rome aroused bitter feelings throughout Catholic Europe, and Henry VIII of England, at that time still loyal to the pope, ostentatiously sent aid to Francis. But although the emperor made little headway against Francis, the French king, on account of strategic blunders and the disunion of the league, was unable to maintain a sure foothold in Italy. The peace of Cambrai (1529) provided that Francis should abandon Naples, Milan, and the Netherlands, but the cession of Burgundy was no longer insisted upon. Francis proceeded to celebrate his marriage with the emperor's sister.

[Sidenote: Habsburg Predominance in Italy]

Eight years of warfare had left Charles V and the Habsburg family unquestionable masters of Italy. Naples was under Charles's direct government. For Milan he received the homage of Sforza. The Medici pope, whose family he had restored in Florence, was now his ally. Charles visited Italy for the first time in 1529 to view his territories, and at Bologna (1530) received from the pope's hands the ancient iron crown of Lombard Italy and the imperial crown of Rome. It was the last papal coronation of a ruler of the Holy Roman Empire.

The peace of Cambrai proved but a truce, and war between Charles and Francis repeatedly blazed forth. Francis made strange alliances in order to create all possible trouble for the emperor,--Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, the Ottoman Turks, even the rebellious Protestant princes within the empire. There were spasmodic campaigns between 1536 and 1538 and between 1542 and 1544, and after the death of Francis and the abdication of Charles, the former's son, Henry II (1547-1559), continued the conflict, newly begun in 1552, until the conclusion of the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559, by which the Habsburgs retained their hold upon Italy, while France, by the occupation of the important bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, extended her northeastern frontier, at the expense of the empire, toward the Rhine River. [Footnote: It was during this war that in 1558 the French captured Calais from the English, and thus put an end to English territorial holdings on the Continent. The English Queen Mary was the wife of Philip II of Spain.]

[Sidenote: Results of the Wars between Charles V and Francis I]

Indirectly, the long wars occasioned by the personal rivalry of Charles and Francis had other results than Habsburg predominance in Italy and French expansion towards the Rhine. They preserved a "balance of power" and prevented the incorporation of the French monarchy into an obsolescent empire. They rendered easier the rise of the Ottoman power in eastern Europe; and French alliance with the Turks gave French trade and enterprise a decided lead in the Levant. They also permitted the comparatively free growth of Protestantism in Germany.

[Sidenote: The Turkish Peril]

More sinister to Charles V than his wars with the French was the advance of the Ottoman Turks. Under their greatest sultan, Suleiman II, the Magnificent (1520-1566), a contemporary of Charles, the Turks were rapidly extending their sway. The Black Sea was practically a Turkish lake; and the whole Euphrates valley, with Bagdad, had fallen into the sultan's power, now established on the Persian Gulf and in control of all of the ancient trade-routes to the East. The northern coasts of Africa from Egypt to Algeria acknowledged the supremacy of Suleiman, whose sea power in the Mediterranean had become a factor to be reckoned with in European politics, threatening not only the islands but the great Christian countries of Italy and Spain. The Venetians were driven from the Morea and from the Ægean Islands; only Cyprus, Crete, and Malta survived in the Mediterranean as outposts of Christendom.

[Sidenote: Suleiman the Magnificent]

Suleiman devoted many years to the extension of his power in Europe, sometimes in alliance with the French king, sometimes upon his own initiative,--and with almost unbroken success. In 1521 he declared war against the king of Hungary on the pretext that he had received no Hungarian congratulations on his accession to the throne. He besieged and captured Belgrade, and in 1526 on the field of Mohács his forces met and overwhelmed the Hungarians, whose king was killed with the flower of the Hungarian chivalry. The battle of Mohács marked the extinction of an independent and united Hungarian state; Ferdinand of Habsburg, brother of Charles V, claimed the kingdom; Suleiman was in actual possession of fully a third of it. The sultan's army carried the war into Austria and in 1529 bombarded and invested Vienna, but so valiant was the resistance offered that after three weeks the siege was abandoned. Twelve years later the greater part of Hungary, including the city of Budapest, became a Turkish province, and in many places churches were turned into mosques. In 1547 Charles V and Ferdinand were compelled to recognize the Turkish conquests in Hungary, and the latter agreed to pay the sultan an annual tribute of 30,000 ducats. Suleiman not only thwarted every attempt of his rivals to recover their territories, but remained throughout his life a constant menace to the security of the hereditary dominions of the Habsburgs.

[Sidenote: Charles V and the Holy Roman Empire.] [Sidenote: Possibility of transforming the Empire into a National German Monarchy]

At the very time when Charles V was encountering these grave troubles in administering his scattered hereditary possessions and in waging war now with the French and now with the Mohammedans, he likewise was saddled with problems peculiar to the government of his empire. Had he been able to devote all his talent and energy to the domestic affairs of the Holy Roman Empire, he might have contributed potently to the establishment of a compact German state. It should be borne in mind that when Charles V was elected emperor in 1519 the Holy Roman Empire was virtually restricted to German-speaking peoples, and that the national unifications of England, France, and Spain, already far advanced, pointed the path to a similar political evolution for Germany. Why should not a modern German national state have been created coextensive with the medieval empire, a state which would have included not only the twentieth-century German Empire but Austria, Holland, and Belgium, and which, stretching from the Baltic to the Adriatic and from the English Channel to the Vistula, would have dominated the continent of Europe throughout the whole modern era? There were certainly grave difficulties in the way, but grave difficulties had also been encountered in consolidating France or Spain, and the difference was rather of degree than of kind. In every other case a strong monarch had overcome feudal princes and ambitious nobles, had deprived cities of many of their liberties, had trampled upon, or tampered with, the privileges of representative assemblies, and had enforced internal order and security. In every such case the monarch had commanded the support of important popular elements and had directed his major efforts to the realization of national aims.

National patriotism was not altogether lacking among Germans of the sixteenth century. They were conscious of a common language which was already becoming a vehicle of literary expression. They were conscious of a common tradition and of a common nationality. They recognized, in many cases, the absurdly antiquated character of their political institutions and ardently longed for reforms. In fact, the trouble with the Germans was not so much the lack of thought about political reform as the actual conflicts between various groups concerning the method and goal of reform. Germans despised the Holy Roman Empire, much as Frenchmen abhorred the memory of feudal society; but Germans were not as unanimous as Frenchmen in advocating the establishment of a strong national monarchy. In Germany were princes, free cities, and knights,-- all nationalistic after a fashion, but all quarreling with each other and with their nominal sovereign.

[Sidenote: Charles V bent on Strengthening Monarchical Power though not on a National Basis]

The emperors themselves were the only sincere and consistent champions of centralized monarchical power, but the emperors were probably less patriotic than any one else in the Holy Roman Empire. Charles V would never abandon his pretensions to world power in order to become a strong monarch over a single nation. Early in his reign he declared that "no monarchy was comparable though not to the Roman Empire. This the whole world had once obeyed, and Christ Himself had paid it honor and obedience. Unfortunately it was now only a shadow of what it had been, but he hoped, with the help of those powerful countries and alliances which God had granted him, to raise it to its ancient glory." Charles V labored for an increase of personal power not only in Germany but also in the Netherlands, in Spain, and in Italy; and with the vast imperial ambition of Charles the ideal of creating a national monarchy on a strictly German basis was in sharp conflict. Charles V could not, certainly would not, pose simply as a German king--a national leader.

[Sidenote: Nationalism among the German Princes]

Under these circumstances the powerful German princes, in defying the emperor's authority and in promoting disruptive tendencies in the Holy Roman Empire, were enabled to lay the blame at the feet of their unpatriotic sovereign and thereby arouse in their behalf a good deal of German national sentiment. In choosing Charles V to be their emperor, the princely electors in 1519 had demanded that German or Latin should be the official language of the Holy Roman Empire, that imperial offices should be open only to Germans, that the various princes should not be subject to any foreign political jurisdiction, that no foreign troops should serve in imperial wars without the approval of the Diet, and that Charles should confirm the sovereign rights of all the princes and appoint from their number a Council of Regency (Reichsregiment) to share in his government.

[Sidenote: The Council of Regency, 1521-1531] [Sidenote: Its Failure to Unify Germany]

In accordance with an agreement reached by a Diet held at Worms in 1521, the Council of Regency was created. Most of its twenty-three members were named by, and represented the interests of, the German princes. Here might be the starting-point toward a closer political union of the German-speaking people, if only a certain amount of financial independence could be secured to the Council. The proposal on this score was a most promising one; it was to support the new imperial administration, not, as formerly, by levying more or less voluntary contributions on the various states, but by establishing a kind of customs-union (Zollverein) and imposing on foreign importations a tariff for revenue. This time, however, the German burghers raised angry protests; the merchants and traders of the Hanseatic towns insisted that the proposed financial burden would fall on them and destroy their business; and their protests were potent enough to bring to nought the princes' plan. Thus the government was forced again to resort to the levy of special financial contributions,--an expedient which usually put the emperor and the Council of Regency at the mercy of the most selfish and least patriotic of the German princes.

[Sidenote: Nationalism among the German Knights]

More truly patriotic as a class than German princes or German burghers were the German knights--those gentlemen of the hill-top and of the road, who, usually poor in pocket though stout of heart, looked down from their high-perched castles with badly disguised contempt upon the vulgar tradesmen of the town or beheld with anger and jealousy the encroachments of neighboring princes, lay and ecclesiastical, more wealthy and powerful than themselves. Especially against the princes the knights contended, sometimes under the forms of law, more often by force and violence and all the barbarous accompaniments of private warfare and personal feud. Some of the knights were well educated and some had literary and scholarly abilities; hardly any one of them was a friend of public order. Yet practically all the knights were intensely proud of their German nationality. It was the knights, who, under the leadership of such fiery patriots as Ulrich von Hutten and Franz von Sickingen, had forcefully contributed in 1519 to the imperial election of Charles V, a German Habsburg, in preference to non-German candidates such as Francis I of France or Henry VIII of England. For a brief period Charles V leaned heavily upon the German knights for support in his struggle with princes and burghers; and at one time it looked as if the knights in union with the emperor would succeed in curbing the power of the princes and in laying the foundations of a strongly centralized national German monarchy.

[Sidenote: Rise of Lutheranism Favored by the Knights and Opposed by Charles V]

But at the critical moment Protestantism arose in Germany, marking a cleavage between the knightly leaders and the emperor. To knights like Ulrich von Hutten and Franz von Sickingen the final break in 1520 between Martin Luther and the pope seemed to assure a separation of Germany from Italy and the erection of a peculiar form of German Christianity about which a truly national state could be builded. As a class the knights applauded Luther and rejoiced at the rapid spread of his teachings throughout Germany. On the other hand, Charles V remained a Roman Catholic. Not only was he loyally attached to the religion of his fathers through personal training and belief, but he felt that the maintenance of what political authority he possessed was dependent largely on the maintenance of the universal authority of the ancient Church, and practically he needed papal assistance for his many foreign projects. The same reasons that led many German princes to accept the Lutheran doctrines as a means of lessening imperial control caused Charles V to reject them. At the same Diet at Worms (1521), at which the Council of Regency had been created, Charles V prevailed upon the Germans present to condemn and outlaw Luther; and this action alienated the knights from the emperor.

[Sidenote: The Knights' War, 1522-1523]

Franz von Sickingen, a Rhenish knight and the ablest of his class, speedily took advantage of the emperor's absence from Germany in 1522 to precipitate a Knights' War. In supreme command of a motley army of fellow-knights, Franz made an energetic attack upon the rich landed estates of the Catholic prince-bishop of Trier. At this point, the German princes, lay as well as ecclesiastical, forgetting their religious predilections and mindful only of their common hatred of the knights, rushed to the defense of the bishop of Trier and drove off Sickingen, who, in April, 1523, died fighting before his own castle of Ebernburg. Ulrich von Hutten fled to Switzerland and perished miserably shortly afterwards. The knights' cause collapsed, and princes and burghers remained triumphant. [Footnote: The Knights' War was soon followed by the Peasants' Revolt, a social rather than a political movement. For an account of the Peasants' Revolt see pp. 133 ff.] It was the end of serious efforts in the sixteenth century to create a national German state.

[Sidenote: Failure of German Nationalism in the Sixteenth Century]

The Council of Regency lasted until 1531, though its inability to preserve domestic peace discredited it, and in its later years it enjoyed little authority. Left to themselves, many of the princes espoused Protestantism. In vain Charles V combated the new religious movement. In vain he proscribed it in several Diets after that of Worms. In vain he assailed its upholders in several military campaigns, such as those against the Schmalkaldic League, which will be treated more fully in another connection. But the long absences of Charles V from Germany and his absorption in a multitude of cares and worries, to say nothing of the spasmodic aid which Francis, the Catholic king of France, gave to the Protestants in Germany, contributed indirectly to the spread of Lutheranism. In the last year of Charles's rule (1555) the profession of the Lutheran faith on the part of German princes was placed by the peace of Augsburg [Footnote: See below, p. 136.] on an equal footing with that of the Catholic religion. Protestantism among the German princes proved a disintegrating, rather than a unifying, factor of national life. The rise of Protestantism was the last straw which broke German nationalism.

[Sidenote: Charles V and England]

With England the relations of Charles V were interesting but not so important as those already noted with the Germans, the Turks, and the French. At first in practical alliance with the impetuous self-willed Henry VIII (1509-1547), whose wife--Catherine of Aragon--was the emperor's aunt, Charles subsequently broke off friendly relations when the English sovereign asked the pope to declare his marriage null and void. Charles prevailed upon the pope to deny Henry's request, and the schism which Henry then created between the Catholic Church in England and the Roman See increased the emperor's bitterness. Towards the close of Henry's reign relations improved again, but it was not until the accession of Charles's cousin, Mary (1553-1558), to the English throne that really cordial friendship was restored. To this Queen Mary, Charles V married his son and successor Philip.

[Sidenote: Abdication of Charles V]

At length exhausted by his manifold labors, Charles V resolved to divide his dominions between his brother Ferdinand and his son Philip and to retire from government. In the hall of the Golden Fleece at Brussels on 25 October, 1555, he formally abdicated the sovereignty of his beloved Netherlands. Turning to the representatives, he said: "Gentlemen, you must not be astonished if, old and feeble as I am in all my members, and also from the love I bear you, I shed some tears." At least in the Netherlands the love was reciprocal. In 1556 he resigned the Spanish and Italian crowns, [Footnote: He made over to his brother all his imperial authority, though he nominally retained the crown of the Holy Roman Empire until 1558] and spent his last years in preparation for a future world. He died in 1558. Personally, Charles V had a prominent lower jaw and a thin, pale face, relieved by a wide forehead and bright, flashing eyes. He was well formed and dignified in appearance. In character he was slow and at times both irresolute and obstinate, but he had a high sense of duty, honest intentions, good soldierly qualities, and a large amount of cold common sense. Though not highly educated, he was well read and genuinely appreciative of music and painting.

PHILIP II AND THE PREDOMINANCE OF SPAIN

For a century and a half after the retirement of Charles V in 1556, we hear of two branches of the Habsburg family--the Spanish Habsburgs and the Austrian Habsburgs, descended respectively from Philip II and Ferdinand. By the terms of the division, Ferdinand, the brother of Charles, received the compact family possessions in the East--Austria and its dependencies, Bohemia, that portion of Hungary not occupied by the Turks, and the title of Holy Roman Emperor,--while the remainder went to Charles's son, Philip II,--Spain, the Netherlands, Franche Comté (the eastern part of Burgundy), the Two Sicilies, Milan, and the American colonies.

Over the history of Ferdinand and his immediate successors, we need not tarry, because, aside from efforts to preserve religious peace and the family's political predominance within the empire and to recover Hungary from the Turks, it is hardly essential. But in western Europe Philip II for a variety of reasons became a figure of world-wide importance: we must examine his career.

[Sidenote: Character and policies of Philip II]

Few characters in history have elicited more widely contradictory estimates than Philip II. Represented by many Protestant writers as a villain, despot, and bigot, he has been extolled by patriotic Spaniards as Philip the Great, champion of religion and right. These conflicting opinions are derived from different views which may be taken of the value and inherent worth of Philip's policies and methods, but what those policies and methods were there can be no doubt. In the first place, Philip II prized Spain as his native country and his main possession--in marked contrast to his father, for he himself had been born in Spain and had resided there during almost all of his life--and he was determined to make Spain the greatest country in the world. In the second place, Philip II was sincerely and piously attached to Catholicism; he abhorred Protestantism as a blasphemous rending of the seamless garment of the Church; and he set his heart upon the universal triumph of his faith. If, by any chance, a question should arise between the advantage of Spain and the best interests of the Church, the former must be sacrificed relentlessly to the latter. Such was the sovereign's stern ideal. No seeming failure of his policies could shake his belief in their fundamental excellence. That whatever he did was done for the greater glory of God, that success or failure depended upon the inscrutable will of the Almighty and not upon himself, were his guiding convictions, which he transmitted to his Spanish successors. Not only was Philip a man of principles and ideals, but he was possessed of a boundless capacity for work and an indomitable will. He preferred tact and diplomacy to war and prowess of arms, though he was quite willing to order his troops to battle if the object, in his opinion, was right. He was personally less accustomed to the sword than to the pen, and no clerk ever toiled more industriously at his papers than did this king. From early morning until far into the night he bent over minutes and reports and other business of kingcraft. Naturally cautious and reserved, he was dignified and princely in public. In his private life, he was orderly and extremely affectionate to his family and servants. Loyalty was Philip's best attribute.

There was a less happy side to the character of Philip II. His free use of the Inquisition in order to extirpate heresy throughout his dominions has rendered him in modern eyes an embodiment of bigotry and intolerance, but it must be remembered that he lived in an essentially intolerant age, when religious persecution was stock in trade of Protestants no less than of Catholics. It is likewise true that he constantly employed craft and deceit and was ready to make use of assassination for political purposes, but this too was in accordance with the temper of the times: lawyers then taught, following the precepts of the famous historian and political philosopher, Machiavelli, that Christian morality is a guide for private conduct rather than for public business, and that "the Prince" may act above the laws in order to promote the public good, and even such famous Protestant leaders as Coligny and William the Silent entered into murder plots. But when all due allowances have been made, the student cannot help feeling that the purpose of Philip II would have been served better by the employment of means other than persecution and murder.

The reign of Philip II covered approximately the second half of the sixteenth century (1556-1598). In his efforts to make Spain the greatest power in the world and to restore the unity problems of Christendom, he was doomed to failure. The chief Confronting reason for the failure is simple--the number and [side note Problems Confronting Philip II] variety of the problems and projects with which Philip II was concerned. It was a case of the king putting a finger in too many pies--he was cruelly burned. Could Philip II have devoted all his energies to one thing at a time, he might conceivably have had greater success, but as it was, he must divide his attention between supervising the complex administration of his already wide dominions and annexing in addition the monarchy and empire of Portugal, between promoting a vigorous commercial and colonial policy and suppressing a stubborn revolt in the Netherlands, between championing Catholicism in both England and France and protecting Christendom against the victorious Mohammedans. It was this multiplicity of interests that paralyzed the might of the Spanish monarch, yet each one of his foreign activities was epochal in the history of the country affected. We shall therefore briefly review Philip's activities in order.

[Sidenote: Spain under Philip II: Political]

As we have seen, Philip II inherited a number of states which had separate political institutions and customs. He believed in national unification, at least of Spain. National unification implied uniformity, and uniformity implied greater power of the crown. So Philip sought to further the work of his great-grandparents, Ferdinand and Isabella,--absolutism and uniformity became his watchwords in internal administration. Politically Philip made no pretense of consulting the Cortes on legislation, and, although he convoked them to vote new taxes, he established the rule that the old taxes were to be considered as granted in perpetuity and as constituting the ordinary revenue of the crown. He treated the nobles as ornamental rather than useful, retiring them from royal offices in favor of lawyers and other subservient members of the middle class. All business was conducted by correspondence and with a final reference to the king, and the natural result was endless delay.

[Sidenote: Spain under Philip II: Economic]

Financially and economically the period was unfortunate for Spain. The burden of the host of foreign enterprises fell with crushing weight upon the Spanish kingdom and particularly upon Castile. Aragon, which was poor and jealous of its own rights, would give little. The income from the Netherlands, at first large, was stopped by the revolt. The Italian states barely paid expenses. The revenue from the American mines, which has been greatly exaggerated, enriched the pockets of individuals rather than the treasury of the state. In Spain itself, the greater part of the land was owned by the ecclesiastical corporations and the nobles, who were exempt from taxation but were intermittently fleeced. Moreover, the 10 per cent tax on all sales--the alcabala [Footnote: See above, p. 57.]--gradually paralyzed all native industrial enterprise. And the persecution of wealthy and industrious Jews and Moors diminished the resources of the kingdom. Spain, at the close of the century, was on the verge of bankruptcy.

[Sidenote: Spain under Philip II: Religious]

In religious matters Philip II aimed at uniform adherence to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. He felt, like so many of his contemporaries, that disparity of belief among subjects would imperil a state. Both from political motives and from religious zeal Philip was a Catholic. He therefore advised the pope, watched with interest the proceedings of the great Council of Trent which was engaged with the reformation of the Church, [Footnote: See below, pp. 158 ff.] and labored for the triumph of his religion not only in his own dominions and in France, but also in Poland, in England, and even in Scandinavia. In Spain he strengthened the Inquisition and used it as a tool of royal despotism.

[Sidenote: Temporary Union of Spain and Portugal]

Territorially Philip II desired to complete political unity in the peninsula by combining the crown of Portugal with those of Castile and Aragon. He himself was closely related to the Portuguese royal family, and in 1580 he laid formal claim to that kingdom. The duke of Braganza, whose claim was better than Philip's, was bought off by immense grants and the country was overrun by Spanish troops. Philip endeavored to placate the Portuguese by full recognition of their constitutional rights and in particular by favoring the lesser nobility or country gentry. Although the monarchies and vast colonial possessions of Spain and Portugal were thus joined for sixty years under a common king, the arrangement never commanded any affection in Portugal, with the result that at the first opportunity, in 1640, Portuguese independence was restored under the leadership of the Braganza family.

[Sidenote: Rebellions Against Philip II in Spain]

The most serious domestic difficulty which Philip had to face was the revolt of the rich and populous Netherlands, which we shall discuss presently. But with other revolts the king had to contend. In his efforts to stamp out heresy and peculiar customs among the descendants of the Moors who still lived in the southern part of Spain, Philip aroused armed opposition. The Moriscos, as they were called, struggled desperately from 1568 to 1570 to reëstablish the independence of Granada. This rebellion was suppressed with great cruelty, and the surviving Moriscos were forced to find new homes in less favored parts of Spain until their final expulsion from the country in 1609. A revolt of Aragon in 1591 was put down by a Castilian army; the constitutional rights of Aragon were diminished and the kingdom was reduced to a greater measure of submission.

[Sidenote: Revolt of the Netherlands: The Causes]

The causes that led to the revolt of the Netherlands may be stated as fourfold. (1) Financial. The burdensome taxes which Charles V had laid upon the country were increased by Philip II and often applied to defray the expenses of other parts of the Spanish possessions. Furthermore, the restrictions which Philip imposed upon Dutch commerce in the interest of that of Spain threatened to interfere seriously with the wonted economic prosperity of the Netherlands. (2) Political. Philip II sought to centralize authority in the Netherlands and despotically deprived the cities and nobles of many of their traditional privileges. Philip never visited the country in person after 1559, and he intrusted his arbitrary government to regents and to Spaniards rather than to native leaders. The scions of the old and proud noble families of the Netherlands naturally resented being supplanted in lucrative and honorable public offices by persons whom they could regard only as upstarts. (3) Religious. Despite the rapid and universal spread of Calvinistic Protestantism throughout the northern provinces, Philip was resolved to force Catholicism upon all of his subjects. He increased the number of bishoprics, decreed acts of uniformity, and in a vigorous way utilized the Inquisition to carry his policy into effect. (4) Personal. The Dutch and Flemish loved Charles V because he had been born and reared among them and always considered their country as his native land. Philip II was born and brought up in Spain. He spoke a language foreign to the Netherlands, and by their inhabitants he was thought of as an alien.

[Sidenote: Margaret of Parma and the "Beggars"]

At first the opposition in the Netherlands was directed chiefly against the Inquisition and the presence of Spanish garrisons in the towns. The regent, Margaret of Parma, Philip's half-sister, endeavored to banish public discontent by a few concessions. The Spanish troops were withdrawn and certain unpopular officials were dismissed. But influential noblemen and burghers banded themselves together early in 1566 and presented to the regent Margaret a petition, in which, while protesting their loyalty, they expressed fear of a general revolt and begged that a special embassy be sent to Philip to urge upon him the necessity of abolishing the Inquisition and of redressing their other grievances. The regent, at first disquieted by the petitioners, was reassured by one of her advisers, who exclaimed, "What, Madam, is your Highness afraid of these beggars (ces gueux)?" Henceforth the chief opponents of Philip's policies in the Netherlands humorously labeled themselves "Beggars" and assumed the emblems of common begging, the wallet and the bowl. The fashion spread quickly, and the "Beggars'" insignia were everywhere to be seen, worn as trinkets, especially in the large towns. In accordance with the "Beggars'" petition, an embassy was dispatched to Spain to lay the grievances before Philip II.

[Sidenote: Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, 1567-1573]

Philip II at first promised to abolish the Inquisition in the Netherlands, but soon repented of his promise. For meanwhile mobs of fanatical Protestants, far more radical than the respectable "Beggars," were rushing to arms, breaking into Catholic churches, wrecking the altars, smashing the images to pieces, profaning monasteries, and showing in their retaliation as much violence--as their enemies had shown cruelty in persecution. In August, 1566, this sacrilegious iconoclasm reached its climax in the irreparable ruin of the magnificent cathedral at Antwerp. Philip replied to these acts, which he interpreted as disloyalty, by sending (1567) his most famous general, the duke of Alva, into the Netherlands with a large army and with instructions to cow the people into submission. Alva proved himself quite capable of understanding and executing his master's wishes: one of his first acts was the creation of a "Council of Troubles," an arbitrary tribunal which tried cases of treason and which operated so notoriously as to merit its popular appellation of the "Council of Blood." During the duke's stay of six years, it has been estimated that eight thousand persons were executed, including the counts of Egmont and Horn, thirty thousand were despoiled of their property, and one hundred thousand quitted the country. Alva, moreover, levied an enormous tax of one-tenth upon the price of merchandise sold. As the tax was collected on several distinct processes, it absorbed at least seven-tenths of the value of certain goods--of cloth, for instance. The tax, together with the lawless confusion throughout the country, meant the destruction of Flemish manufactures and trade. It was, therefore, quite natural that the burgesses of the southern Netherlands, Catholic though most of them were, should unite with the nobles and with the Protestants of the North in opposing Spanish tyranny. The whole country was now called to arms.

[Sidenote: William the Silent, Prince of Orange]

One of the principal noblemen of the Netherlands was a German, William of Nassau, prince of Orange.[Footnote: William (1533-1584), now commonly called "the Silent." There appears to be no contemporaneous justification of the adjective as applied to him, but the misnomer, once adopted by later writers, has insistently clung to him.] He had been governing the provinces of Holland and Zeeland when Alva arrived, but as he was already at the point of accepting Protestantism he had prudently retired into Germany, leaving his estates to be confiscated by the Spanish governor. Certain trifling successes of the insurgents now called William back to head the popular movement. For many years he bore the brunt of the war and proved himself not only a resourceful general, but an able diplomat and a whole-souled patriot. He eventually gained the admiration and love of the whole Dutch people.

[Sidenote: The "Sea Beggars"]

The first armed forces of William of Orange were easily routed by Alva, but in 1569 a far more menacing situation was presented. In that year William began to charter corsairs and privateers to prey upon Spanish shipping. These "Sea Beggars," as they were called, were mostly wild and lawless desperadoes who stopped at nothing in their hatred of Catholics and Spaniards: they early laid the foundations of Dutch maritime power and at the same time proved a constant torment to Alva. They made frequent incursions into the numerous waterways of the Netherlands and perpetually fanned the embers of revolt on land. Gradually William collected new armies, which more and more successfully defied Alva.

[Sidenote: The "Spanish Fury" and the Pacification of Ghent, 1576]

The harsh tactics of Alva had failed to restore the Netherlands to Philip's control, and in 1573 Alva was replaced in the regency by the more politic Requesens, who continued the struggle as best he could but with even less success than Alva. Soon after Requesens's death in 1576, the Spanish army in the Netherlands, left without pay or food, mutinied and inflicted such horrible indignities upon several cities, notably Antwerp, that the savage attack is called the "Spanish Fury." Deputies of all the seventeen provinces at once concluded an agreement, termed the Pacification of Ghent (1576), by which they mutually guaranteed resistance to the Spanish until the king should abolish the Inquisition and restore their old-time liberties.

Then Philip II tried a policy of concession, but the new governor, the dashing Don John of Austria, fresh from a great naval victory over the Turks, soon discovered that it was too late to reconcile the Protestants. William the Silent was wary of the Spanish offers, and Don John died in 1578 without having achieved very much.

[Sidenote: Farnese, Duke of Parma] [Sidenote: The Treaty of Array and the Union of Utrecht (1579): the Permanent Division of the Netherlands]

But Philip II was not without some success in the Netherlands. He was fortunate in having a particularly determined and tactful governor in the country from 1578 to 1592 in the person of Alexander Farnese, duke of Parma. Skillfully mingling war and diplomacy, Farnese succeeded in sowing discord between the northern and southern provinces: the former were Dutch, Calvinist, and commercial; the latter were Flemish and Walloon, Catholic, and industrial. The ten southern provinces might eventually have more to fear from the North than from continued union with Spain; their representatives, therefore, signed a defensive league at Arras in 1579 for the protection of the Catholic religion and with the avowed purpose of effecting a reconciliation with Philip II. In the same year the northern provinces agreed to the Union of Utrecht, binding themselves together "as if they were one province" to maintain their rights and liberties "with life-blood and goods" against Spanish tyranny and to grant complete freedom of worship and of religious opinion throughout the confederation. In this way the Pacification of Ghent was nullified and the Netherlands were split into two parts, each going its own way, each developing its own history. The southern portion was to remain in Habsburg hands for over two centuries, being successively termed "Spanish Netherlands" and "Austrian Netherlands"-- roughly speaking, it is what to-day we call Belgium. The northern portion was to become free and independent, and, as the "United Provinces" or simply "Holland," to take its place among the nations of the world. For a considerable period of time Holland was destined to be more prosperous than Belgium. The latter suffered more grievously than the former from the actual hostilities; and the Dutch, by closing the River Scheldt and dominating the adjacent seas, dealt a mortal blow at the industrial and commercial supremacy of Antwerp and transferred the chief trade and business of all the Netherlands to their own city of Amsterdam.

[Sidenote: Reasons for the Success of the Dutch]

For many years the struggle dragged on. At times it seemed probable that Farnese and the Spaniards would overcome the North by force as they had obtained the South by diplomacy. But a variety of reasons explain the ultimate success of the Dutch. The nature of the country rendered ordinary campaigning very difficult--the network of canals constituted natural lines of defense and the cutting of the dikes might easily imperil an invading army. Again, the seafaring propensities of the Dutch stimulated them to fit out an increasing number of privateers which constantly preyed upon Spanish commerce: it was not long before this traffic grew important and legitimate, so that in the following century Amsterdam became one of the greatest cities of the world, and Holland assumed a prominent place among commercial and colonial nations. Thirdly, the employment of foreign mercenaries in the army of defense enabled the native population to devote the more time to peaceful pursuits, and, despite the persistence of war, the Dutch provinces increased steadily in wealth and prosperity. Fourthly, the cautious Fabian policy of William the Silent prevented the Dutch from staking heavily upon battles in the open field. Fifthly, the Dutch received a good deal of assistance from Protestants of Germany, England, and France. Finally, Philip II pursued too many great projects at once to be able to bring a single one to a satisfactory conclusion: his war with Queen Elizabeth of England and his interference in the affairs of France inextricably complicated his plans in the Netherlands.

[Sidenote: Formal Declaration of Dutch Independence, 1581]

In 1581 Philip II published a ban against William of Orange, proclaiming him a traitor and an outlaw and offering a reward to any one who would take him dead or alive. William replied by his famous "Apology" to the charges against him; but his practical answer to the king was the Act of Abjuration, by which at his persuasion the representatives of the northern provinces, assembled at The Hague, solemnly proclaimed their separation from the crown of Spain, broke the royal seal of Philip II, and declared the king deprived of all authority over them. We should call this Act of 1581 the Dutch declaration of independence. It was an augury of the definitive result of the war.

[Sidenote: Recognition of Dutch Independence]

Although William the Silent was assassinated by an agent of Spain (1584), and Antwerp was captured from the Protestants in 1585, the ability and genius of Farnese did not avail to make further headway against the United Provinces; but Philip II, stubborn to the end, positively refused to recognize Dutch independence. In 1609 Philip III of Spain consented to a twelve years' truce with the States-General of The Hague. In the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) the Dutch and Spaniards again became embroiled, and the freedom of the republic was not recognized officially by Spain till the general peace of Westphalia in 1648. [Footnote: See below, p. 229.]

The seven provinces, which had waged such long war with Spain, constituted, by mutual agreement, a confederacy, each preserving a distinct local government and administration, but all subject to a general parliament--the States-General--and to a stadtholder, or governor-general, an office which subsequently became hereditary in the Orange family. Between the States-General and the stadtholder, a constitutional conflict was carried on throughout the greater part of the seventeenth century--the former, supported by well-to-do burghers, favoring a greater measure of political democracy, the latter, upheld by aristocratically minded nobles, laboring for the development of monarchical institutions under the Orange family.

[Sidenote: Natural Opposition of England and France to the Policies of Philip II]

Not only his efforts in the Netherlands but many other projects of Philip II were frustrated by remarkable parallel developments in the two national monarchies of England and France. Both these countries were naturally jealous opposition and fearful of an undue expansion of Spain, which might upset the balance of power. Both states, from their geographical locations, would normally be inimical to Philip II: England would desire, from her island position, to destroy the monopoly which Spain claimed of the carrying trade of the seas; France, still encircled by Habsburg possessions in Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands, would adhere to her traditional policy of allying herself with every foe of the Spanish king. Then, too, the papal authority had been rejected in England and seriously questioned in France: Philip's crusading zeal made him the champion of the Church in those countries. For ecclesiastical as well as for economic and political purposes it seemed necessary to the Spanish king that he should bring France and England under his direct influence. On their side, patriotic French and English resented such foreign interest in their domestic affairs, and the eventual failure of Philip registered a wonderful growth of national feeling among the peoples who victoriously contended against him. The beginnings of the real modern greatness of France and England date from their struggle with Philip II.

[Sidenote: Philip II and Mary Tudor]

At the outset of his reign, Philip seemed quite successful in his foreign relations. As we have seen, he was in alliance with England through his marriage with Queen Mary Tudor (1553-1558): she had temporarily restored the English Church to communion with the Holy See, and was conducting her foreign policy in harmony with Philip's--because of her husband she lost to the French the town of Calais, the last English possession on the Continent (1558). Likewise, as has been said, Philip II concluded with France in 1559 the advantageous treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis. But during the ensuing thirty years the tables were completely turned. Both England and France ended by securing respite from Spanish interference.

[Sidenote: Philip II and Elizabeth]

Mary Tudor died unhappy and childless in 1558, and the succession of her sister Queen Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, altered the relations between the English and Spanish courts. Elizabeth (1558-1603) was possessed of an imperious, haughty, energetic character; she had remarkable intelligence and an absorbing patriotism. She inspired confidence in her advisers and respect among her people, so that she was commonly called "Good Queen Bess" despite the fact that her habits of deceit and double-dealing gave color to the French king's remark that she was the greatest liar in Christendom. This was the woman with whom Philip II had to deal; he tried many tactics in order to gain his ends,--all of them hopelessly unsuccessful.

Philip first proposed matrimony, but Elizabeth was very careful not to give herself, or England, such a master. Then when the queen declared herself a Protestant and showed no inclination to assist Philip in any of his enterprises, the Spanish king proceeded to plot against her throne. He subsidized Roman Catholic priests, especially Jesuits, who violated the laws of the land. He stirred up sedition and even went so far as to plan Elizabeth's assassination. Many conspiracies against the English queen centered in the person of the ill-starred Mary Stuart, [Footnote: Mary Stuart (1542-1587).] queen of Scotland, who was next in line of succession to the English throne and withal a Catholic.

[Sidenote: Mary Stuart]

Descended from the Stuart kings of Scotland and from Henry VII of England, related to the powerful family of Guise in France, Mary had been brought up at the French court and married to the short-lived French king, Francis II. Upon the death of the latter she returned in 1561 to Scotland, a young woman of but eighteen years, only to find that the government had fallen victim to the prevalent factional fights among the Scotch nobles and that in the preceding year the parliament had solemnly adopted a Calvinistic form of Protestantism. By means of tact and mildness, however, Mary won the respect of the nobles and the admiration of the people, until a series of marital troubles and blunders--her marriage with a worthless cousin, Henry Darnley, and then her scandalous marriage with Darnley's profligate murderer, the earl of Bothwell--alienated her people from her and drove her into exile. She abdicated the throne of Scotland in favor of her infant son, James VI, who was reared a Protestant and subsequently became King James I of England, and she then (1568) threw herself upon the mercy of Elizabeth. She thought she would find in England a haven of refuge; instead she found there a prison.

For the score of years during which she remained Elizabeth's prisoner, Mary Stuart was the object of many plots and conspiracies against the existing governments of both Scotland and England. In every such scheme were to be found the machinations and money of the Spanish king. In fact, as time went on, it seemed to a growing section of the English people as though the cause of Elizabeth was bound up with Protestantism and with national independence and prosperity just as certainly as the success of Mary would lead to the triumph of Catholicism, the political supremacy of Spain, and the commercial ruin of England. It was under these circumstances that Mary's fate was sealed. Because of a political situation over which she had slight control, the ex-queen of Scotland was beheaded by Elizabeth's orders in 1587.

[Sidenote: The Armada]

Philip II had now tried and failed in every expedient but one,--the employment of sheer force. Even this he attempted in order to avenge the death of Mary Stuart and to bring England, politically, religiously, and commercially, into harmony with his Spanish policies. The story of the preparation and the fate of the Invincible Armada is almost too well known to require repetition. It was in 1588 that there issued from the mouth of the Tagus River the most formidable fleet which up to that time Christendom had ever beheld--130 ships, 8000 seamen, 19,000 soldiers, the flower of the Spanish chivalry. In the Netherlands it was to be joined by Alexander Farnese with 33,000 veteran troops. But in one important respect Philip had underestimated his enemy: he had counted upon a divided country. Now the attack upon England was primarily national, rather than religious, and Catholics vied with Protestants in offering aid to the queen: it was a united rather than a divided nation which Philip faced. The English fleet, composed of comparatively small and easily maneuvered vessels, worked great havoc upon the ponderous and slow-moving Spanish galleons, and the wreck of the Armada was completed by a furious gale which tossed ship after ship upon the rocks of northern Scotland. Less than a third of the original expedition ever returned to Spain.

Philip II had thus failed in his herculean effort against England. He continued in small ways to annoy and to irritate Elizabeth. He tried-- without result--to incite the Catholics of Ireland against the queen. He exhausted his arsenals and his treasures in despairing attempts to equip a second and even a third Armada. But he was doomed to bitterest disappointment, for two years before his death an English fleet sacked his own great port of Cadiz. The war with England ruined the navy and the commerce of Spain. The defeat of the Armada was England's first title to commercial supremacy.

[Sidenote: Economic Benefits of the Period for England]

It was long maintained that the underlying causes of the conflict between England and Spain in the second half of the sixteenth century and its chief interest was religious--that it was part of an epic struggle between Protestantism and Catholicism. There may be a measure of truth in such an idea, but most recent writers believe that the chief motives for the conflict, as well as its important results, were essentially economic. From the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, English sailors and freebooters, such as Hawkins and Drake, took the offensive against Spanish trade and commerce; and many ships, laden with silver and goods from the New World and bound for Cadiz, were seized and towed into English harbors. The queen herself frequently received a share of the booty and therefore tended to encourage the practice. For nearly thirty years Philip put up with the capture of his treasure ships, the raiding of his colonies, and the open assistance rendered to his rebellious subjects. Only when he reached the conclusion that his power would never be secure in the Netherlands or in America did he dispatch the Armada. Its failure finally freed Holland and marked the collapse of the Spanish monopoly upon the high seas and in the New World.

[Sidenote: Affairs in France]

Before we can appreciate the motives and results of the interference of Philip II in French affairs, a few words must be said about what had happened in France since Francis I (1515-1547) and his son, Henry II (1547-1559), exalted the royal power in their country and not only preserved French independence of the surrounding empire of Charles V but also increased French prestige by means of a strong policy in Italy and by the extension of frontiers toward the Rhine. Henry II had married a member of the famous Florentine family of the Medici-- Catherine de' Medici--a large and ugly woman, but ambitious, resourceful, and capable, who, by means of trickery and deceit, took an active part in French politics from the death of her husband, throughout the reigns of her feeble sons, Francis II (1559-1560), Charles IX (1560-1574), and Henry III (1574-1589). Catherine found her position and that of her royal children continually threatened by (1) the Protestants (Huguenots), (2) the great nobles, and (3) Philip II of Spain.

[Sidenote: Dangers to Royal Power in France: Protestantism]

French Protestantism had grown steadily during the first half of the sixteenth century until it was estimated that from a twentieth to a thirtieth of the nation had fallen away from the Catholic Church. The influence of the advocates of the new faith was, however, much greater than their number, because the Huguenots, as they were called, were recruited mainly from the prosperous, intelligent middle class,--the bourgeoisie,--who had been intrusted by preceding French kings with many important offices. The Huguenots represented, therefore, a powerful social class and likewise one that was opposed to the undue increase of royal power. They demanded, not only religious toleration for themselves, but also regular meetings of the Estates-General and control of the nation's representatives over financial matters. The kings, on their part, felt that political solidarity and their own personal rule were dependent upon the maintenance of religious uniformity in the nation and the consequent defeat of the pretensions of the Huguenots. Francis I and Henry II had persecuted the Protestants with bitterness. From 1562 to 1593 a series of so-called religious wars embroiled the whole country.

[Sidenote: Dangers to Royal Power in France: the Nobles]

French politics were further complicated during the second half of the sixteenth century by the recrudescence of the power of the nobles. The so-called religious wars were quite as much political as religious-- they resulted from efforts of this or that faction of noblemen to dictate to a weak king. Two noble families particularly vied with each other for power,--the Bourbons and the Guises,--and the unqualified triumph of either would be certain to bring calamity to the sons of Catherine de' Medici.

[Sidenote: The Bourbons]

The Bourbons bore the proud title of princes of the blood because they were direct descendants of a French king. Their descent, to be sure, was from Saint Louis, king in the thirteenth century, and they were now, therefore, only distant cousins of the reigning kings, but as the latter died off, one after another, leaving no direct successors, the Bourbons by the French law of strict male succession became heirs to the royal family. The head of the Bourbons, a certain Anthony, had married the queen of Navarre and had become thereby king of Navarre, although the greater part of that country--the region south of the Pyrenees--had been annexed to Spain in 1512. Anthony's brother Louis, prince of Condé, had a reputation for bravery, loyalty, and ability. Both Condé and the king of Navarre were Protestants.

[Sidenote: The Guise Family]

The Guise family was descended from a duke of Lorraine who had attached himself to the court of Francis I. It was really a foreign family, inasmuch as Lorraine was then a dependency of the Holy Roman Empire, but the patriotic exploits of the head of the family in defending Metz against the Emperor Charles V and in capturing Calais from the English endeared the Guises to a goodly part of the French nation. The duke of Guise remained a stanch Catholic, and his brother, called the Cardinal of Lorraine, was head of as many as twelve bishoprics, which gave him an enormous revenue and made him the most conspicuous churchman in France. During the reign of Henry II (1547-1559) the Guises were especially influential. They fought valiantly in foreign wars. They spurred on the king to a great persecution of the Huguenots. They increased their own landed estates. And they married one of their relatives--Mary, queen of Scots--to the heir to the throne. But after the brief reign of Mary's husband, Francis II (1559-1560), the Guise family encountered not only the active opposition of their chief noble rivals, the Bourbons, with their Huguenot allies, but likewise the jealousy and crafty intrigues of Catherine de' Medici.

[Sidenote: Religious Wars in France]

Catherine feared both the ambition of the powerful Guise family and the disruptive tendencies of Protestantism. The result was a long series of confused civil wars between the ardent followers, respectively Catholic and Protestant, of the Guise and Bourbon families, in which the queen-mother gave support first to one side and then to the other. There were no fewer than eight of these sanguinary conflicts, each one ending with the grant of slight concessions to the Huguenots and the maintenance of the weak kings upon the throne. The massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day (1572) was a horrible incident of Catherine's policy of "trimming." Fearing the undue influence over the king of Admiral de Coligny, an upright and able Huguenot leader, the queen-mother, with the aid of the Guises, prevailed upon the weak-minded Charles IX to authorize the wholesale assassination of Protestants. The signal was given by the ringing of a Parisian church-bell at two o'clock in the morning of 24 August, 1572, and the slaughter went on throughout the day in the capital and for several weeks in the provinces. Coligny was murdered; even women and children were not spared. It is estimated that in all at least three thousand--perhaps ten thousand--lost their lives.

[Sidenote: The "Politiques"]

The massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day did not destroy French Protestantism or render the Huguenot leaders more timid in asserting their claims. On the other hand, it brought into clear light a noteworthy division within the ranks of their Catholic opponents in France--on one side, the rigorous followers of the Guise family, who complained only that the massacre had not been sufficiently comprehensive, and, on the other side, a group of moderate Catholics, usually styled the "Politiques" who, while continuing to adhere to the Roman Church, and, when called upon, bearing arms on the side of the king, were strongly opposed to the employment of force or violence or persecution in matters of religion. The Politiques were particularly patriotic, and they blamed the religious wars and the intolerant policy of the Guises for the seeming weakness of the French monarchy. They thought the massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day a blunder as well as a crime.

The emergence of the Politiques did not immediately make for peace; rather, it substituted a three-sided for a two-sided conflict.

[Sidenote: Philip II and the War of the Three Henries]

After many years, filled with disorder, it became apparent that the children of Catherine de' Medici would have no direct male heirs and that the crown would therefore legally devolve upon the son of Anthony of Bourbon--Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre and a Protestant. Such an outcome was naturally distasteful to the Guises and abhorrent to Philip II of Spain. In 1585 a definite league was formed between Henry, duke of Guise, and the Spanish king, whereby the latter undertook by military force to aid the former's family in seizing the throne: French politics in that event would be controlled by Spain, and Philip would secure valuable assistance in crushing the Netherlands and conquering England.[Footnote: At that very time, Mary, Queen of Scots, cousin of Henry, duke of Guise, was held a prisoner in England by Queen Elizabeth. See above, p. 99.] The immediate outcome of the agreement was the war of the three Henries--Henry III, son of Catherine de' Medici and king of France; Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre and heir to the French throne; and Henry, duke of Guise, with the foreign support of Philip II of Spain. Henry of Guise represented the extreme Catholic party; Henry of Navarre, the Protestant faction; and Henry of France, the Catholic moderates--the Politiques--who wanted peace and were willing to grant a measure of toleration. The last two were upholders of French independence against the encroachments of Spain.

The king was speedily gotten into the power of the Guises, but little headway was made by the extreme Catholics against Henry of Navarre, who now received domestic aid from the Politiques and foreign assistance from Queen Elizabeth of England and who benefited by the continued misfortunes of Philip II. At no time was the Spanish king able to devote his whole attention and energy to the French war. At length in 1588 Henry III caused Henry of Guise to be assassinated. The king never had a real chance to prove whether he could become a national leader in expelling the foreigners and putting an end to civil war, for he himself was assassinated in 1589. With his dying breath he designated the king of Navarre as his successor.

[Sidenote: Henry of Navarre]

Henry of Navarre, the first of the Bourbon family upon the throne of France, took the title of Henry IV (1589-1610). [Footnote: It is a curious fact that Henry of Navarre, like Henry of Guise and Henry of France, died by the hand of an assassin.] For four years after his accession, Henry IV was obliged to continue the civil war, but his abjuration of Protestantism and his acceptance of Catholicism in 1593 removed the chief source of opposition to him within France, and the rebellion speedily collapsed. With the Spanish king, however, the struggle dragged on until the treaty of Vervins, which in the last year of Philip's life practically confirmed the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis.

[Sidenote: Decline of Spain and Rise of France]

Thus Philip II had failed to conquer or to dismember France. He had been unable to harmonize French policies with those of his own in the Netherlands or in England. Despite his endeavors, the French crown was now on the head of one of his enemies, who, if something of a renegade Protestant himself, had nevertheless granted qualified toleration to heretics. Nor were these failures of Philip's political and religious policies mere negative results to France. The unsuccessful interference of the Spanish king contributed to the assurance of French independence, patriotism, and solidarity. France, not Spain, was to be the center of European politics during the succeeding century.

[Sidenote: Philip II and the Turks]

In concluding this chapter, a large section of which has been devoted to an account of the manifold failures of Philip II, a word should be added about one exploit that brought glory to the Spanish monarch. It was he who administered the first effective check to the advancing Ottoman Turks.

After the death of Suleiman the Magnificent (1566), the Turks continued to strengthen their hold upon Hungary and to fit out piratical expeditions in the Mediterranean. The latter repeatedly ravaged portions of Sicily, southern Italy, and even the Balearic Islands, and in 1570 an Ottoman fleet captured Cyprus from the Venetians. Malta and Crete remained as the only Christian outposts in the Mediterranean. In this extremity, a league was formed to save Italy. Its inspirer and preacher was Pope Pius V, but Genoa and Venice furnished the bulk of the fleet, while Philip II supplied the necessary additional ships and the commander-in-chief in the person of his half-brother, Don John of Austria. The expedition, which comprised 208 vessels, met the Ottoman fleet of 273 ships in the Gulf of Lepanto, off the coast of Greece, on 7 October, 1571, and inflicted upon it a crushing defeat. The Turkish warships were almost all sunk or driven ashore; it is estimated that 8000 Turks lost their lives. When news of the victory reached Rome, Pope Pius intoned the famous verse, "There was a man sent from God whose name was John."

[Sidenote: Lepanto]

The battle of Lepanto was of great political importance. It gave the naval power of the Mohammedans a blow from which it never recovered and ended their aggressive warfare in the Mediterranean. It was, in reality, the last Crusade: Philip II was in his most becoming rôle as champion of church and pope; hardly a noble family in Spain or Italy was not represented in the battle; volunteers came from all parts of the world; the celebrated Spanish writer Cervantes lost an arm at Lepanto. Western Europe was henceforth to be comparatively free from the Ottoman peril.

ADDITIONAL READING

GENERAL, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE HABSBURG TERRITORIES. A. H. Johnson, Europe in the Sixteenth Century, 1494-1598 (1897), ch. iii- ix, a political summary; Mary A. Hollings, Renaissance and Reformation, 1453-1660 (1910), ch. vi, ix, x, a brief outline; E. M. Hulme, Renaissance and Reformation, 2d ed. (1915), ch. x, xiv, xxiv- xxviii, a brief and fragmentary account; T. H. Dyer, A History of Modern Europe, 3d ed., rev. by Arthur Hassall (1901), ch. ix, xi- xxvii, old but containing a multitude of political facts; Cambridge Modern History, Vol. II (1904), ch. ii, iii, vii, viii, and Vol. III (1905), ch. xv, v; History of All Nations, Vol. XI and Vol. XII, ch. i-iii, by the German scholar on the period, Martin Philippson; Histoire générale, Vol. IV, ch. iii, ix, Vol. V, ch. ii-v, xv. Of the Emperor Charles V the old standard English biography by William Robertson, still readable, has now been largely superseded by that of Edward Armstrong, 2 vols. (1902); two important German works on Charles V are Baumgarten, Geschichte Karls V, 3 vols. (1885-1892), and Konrad Häbler, Geschichte Spaniens unter den Habsburgen, Vol. I (1907). Of Philip II the best brief biography in English is Martin Hume's (1902), which should be consulted, if possible, in connection with Charles Bratli, Philippe II, Roi d'Espagne: Etude sur sa vie et son caractère, new ed. (1912), an attempt to counteract traditional Protestant bias against the Spanish monarch. Also see M. A. S. Hume, Spain, its Greatness and Decay, 1479-1788 (1898), ch. i-vi, for a general account of the reigns of Philip II and Philip III; and Paul Herre, Papstium und Papstwahl im Zeitalter Philipps II (1907) for a sympathetic treatment of Philip's relations with the papacy. For a proper understanding of sixteenth-century politics the student should read that all-important book, Machiavelli's Prince, the most convenient English edition of which is in "Everyman's Library." For political events in the Germanies in the sixteenth century: E. F. Henderson, A Short History of Germany, 2 vols. in 1 (1902); Sidney Whitman, Austria (1899); Gustav Welf, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Gegenreformation (1899), an elaborate study; Franz Krones, Handbuch der Geschichte Oesterreichs von der ältesten Zeit, Vol. III (1877), Book XIII.

FRANCE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. A. J. Grant, The French Monarchy, 1483-1789 (1900), Vol. I, ch. iii-v; G. W. Kitchin, A History of France, 4th ed. (1894-1899), Vol. II, Book II, ch. iv-v, and Book III; Cambridge Modern History, Vol. III (1905), ch. i; Ernest Lavisse (editor), Histoire de France, Vol. V (1903), Books III, IV, VII, VIII, and Vol. VI (1904), Books I-III, the most thorough and best treatment; Edward Armstrong, The French Wars of Religion (1892); J. W. Thompson, The Wars of Religion in France: the Huguenots, Catherine de Medici and Philip II of Spain, 1559-1576 (1909), containing several suggestions on the economic conditions of the time; A. W. Whitehead, Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France (1904); C. C. Jackson, The Last of the Valois, 2 vols. (1888), and, by the same author, The First of the Bourbons, 2 vols. (1890); Lucien Romier, Les origines politiques des Guerres de Religion, Vol. I, Henri II et l'Italie, 1547-1555 (1913), scholarly and authoritative, stressing economic rather than political aspects; Louis Batiffol, The Century of the Renaissance in France, Eng. trans. by Elsie F. Buckley (1916), covering the years 1483-1610, largely political.

ENGLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. Brief accounts: A. L. Cross, History of England and Greater Britain (1914), ch. xix-xxvi; E. P. Cheyney, A Short History of England (1904), ch. xii, xiii; Cambridge Modern History, Vol. III (1905), ch. viii-xi; J. F. Bright, History of England, 5 vols. (1884-1904), Vol. II, Personal Monarchy, 1485-1688 (in part); A. D. Innes, History of England and the British Empire, 4 vols, (1914), Vol. II, ch. iii-viii; J. R. Seeley, Growth of British Policy, 2 vols. (1895), a brilliant work, of which Vol. I, Part I, affords an able account of the policy of Elizabeth. More detailed studies: J. S. Brewer, The Reign of Henry VIII from his Accession to the Death of Wolsey, 2 vols. (1884); H. A. L. Fisher, Political History of England, 1485-1547 (1906), ch. vi-xviii; A. F. Pollard, History of England from the Accession of Edward VI to the Death of Elizabeth (1910); J. A. Froude, History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 12 vols. (1870-1872), a masterpiece of prose-style but strongly biased in favor of Henry VIII and against anything connected with the Roman Church; E. P. Cheyney, A History of England from the Defeat of the Armada to the Death of Elizabeth, Vol. I (1914), scholarly and well-written. Also see Andrew Lang, A History of Scotland, 2d ed. (1901-1907), Vols. I and II; and P. H. Brown, History of Scotland (1899-1900), Vols. I and II. Important biographies: A. F. Pollard, Henry VIII (1905), the result of much research and distinctly favorable to Henry; E. L. Taunton, Thomas Wolsey, Legate and Reformer (1902), the careful estimate of a Catholic scholar; Mandell Creighton, Cardinal Wolsey (1888), a good clear account, rather favorable to the cardinal; J. M. Stone, Mary the First, Queen of England (1901), a sympathetic biography of Mary Tudor; Mandell Creighton, Queen Elizabeth (1909), the best biography of the Virgin Queen; E. S. Beesly, Queen Elizabeth (1892), another good biography. For Mary, Queen of Scots, see the histories of Scotland mentioned above and also Andrew Lang, The Mystery of Mary Stuart (1901); P. H. Brown, Scotland in the Time of Queen Mary (1904); and R. S. Rait, Mary Queen of Scots, 2d ed. (1899), containing important source-material concerning Mary. Walter Walsh, The Jesuits in Great Britain (1903), emphasizes their political opposition to Elizabeth. Martin Hume, Two English Queens and Philip (1908), valuable for the English relations of Philip II. For English maritime development see David Hannay, A Short History of the English Navy (1898); J. S. Corbett, Drake and the Tudor Navy, 2 vols. (1898), and, by the same author, The Successors of Drake (1900); J. A. Froude, English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century (1895).

THE NETHERLANDS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. A good brief account is that of George Edmundson in the Cambridge Modern History, Vol. III (1905), ch. vi, vii, and Vol. II (1904), ch. xix. For the Dutch Netherlands the great standard work is now P. J. Blok, History of the People of the Netherlands, trans. in large part by O. A. Bierstadt, and for the Belgian Netherlands a corresponding function is performed in French by Henri Pirenne. J. L. Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, 3 vols. (many editions), is brilliantly written and still famous, but it is based on an inadequate study of the sources and is marred throughout by bitter prejudice against the Spaniards and in favor of the Protestant Dutch: it is now completely superseded by the works of Blok and Pirenne. Admirable accounts of William the Silent are the two-volume biography by Ruth Putnam and the volume by the same author in the "Heroes of the Nations" Series (1911); the most detailed study is the German work of Felix Rachfahl.

THE TURKS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. Cambridge Modern History, Vol. III (1905), ch. iv; A. H. Lybyer, The Government of the Ottoman Empire in the Time of Suleiman the Magnificent (1913); Stanley Lane-Poole, Turkey (1889) in the "Story of the Nations" Series; Nicolae Jorga, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches; Leopold von Ranke, Die Osmanen und die spanische Monarchie im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert; Joseph von Hammer, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches, 2d ed., 4 vols. (1834-1835), Vol. II, a famous German work, which has been translated into French.

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IV. THE PROTESTANT REVOLT AND THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AT THE OPENING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: Differences between Religious Bodies in 1500 and Those in 1900]

Four hundred years ago, practically all people who lived in central or western Europe called themselves "Christians" and in common recognized allegiance to an ecclesiastical body which was called the "Catholic Church." This Catholic Church in 1500 differed from any present-day religious society in the following respects: (1) Every child was born into the Church as now he is born into the state; every person was expected to conform, at least outwardly, to the doctrines and practices of the Church; in other words the Catholic Church claimed a universal membership. (2) The Church was not supported by voluntary contributions as now, but by compulsory taxes; every person was compelled to assist in defraying the expenses of the official religion. (3) The state undertook to enforce obedience on the part of its subjects to the Church; a person attacking the authority of the Catholic Church would be liable to punishment by the state, and this held true in England and Germany as well as in Spain or Italy.

[Sidenote: Rise of Protestantism]

Then, within fifty years, between 1520 and 1570, a large number of Catholic Christians, particularly in Germany, Scandinavia, Scotland, and England, and a smaller number in the Low Countries and in France, broke off communion with the ancient Church and became known as Protestants. Before the year 1500 there were no Protestants; since the sixteenth century, the dominant Christianity of western and central Europe has been divided into two parts--Catholic and Protestant. It is important that we should know something of the origin and significance of this division, because the Christian religion and the Christian Church had long played very great roles in the evolution of European civilization and because ecclesiastical and religious questions have continued, since the division, to deserve general attention.

[Sidenote: "Catholic" Christianity]

Let us understand clearly what was meant in the year 1500 by the expression "Catholic Christianity." It embraced a belief in certain religious precepts which it was believed Jesus of Nazareth had taught at the beginning of the Christian era, the inculcation of certain moral teachings which were likewise derived from Jesus, and a definite organization--the Church--founded, it was assumed, by Jesus in order to teach and practice, till the end of time, His religious and moral doctrines. By means of the Church, man would know best how to order his life in this world and how to prepare his soul for everlasting happiness in the world to come.

[Sidenote: The Catholic Church]

The Catholic Church was, therefore, a vast human society, believed to be of divine foundation and sanction, and with a mission greater and more lofty than that of any other organization. Church and state had each its own sphere, but the Church had insisted for centuries that it was greater and more necessary than the state. The members of the Church were the sum-total of Christian believers who had been baptized --practically the population of western and central Europe--and its officers constituted a regular governing hierarchy.

[Sidenote: Head of the Church]

At the head of the hierarchy was the bishop of Rome, styled the pope or sovereign pontiff, who from the first had probably enjoyed a leading position in the Church as the successor of St. Peter, prince of the apostles, and whose claims to be the divinely appointed chief bishop had been generally recognized throughout western Europe as early as the third century--perhaps earlier. The bishop of Rome was elected for life by a group of clergymen, called cardinals, who originally had been in direct charge of the parish churches in the city of Rome, but who later were frequently selected by the pope from various countries because they were distinguished churchmen. The pope chose the cardinals; the cardinals elected the pope. Part of the cardinals resided in Rome, and in conjunction with a host of clerks, translators, lawyers, and special officials, constituted the Curia, or papal court, for the conduct of general church business.

[Sidenote: Local Administration of the Church] [Sidenote: Secular Clergy]

For the local administration of church affairs, the Catholic world was divided under the pope into several territorial subdivisions, (1) The patriarchates had been under patriarchs who had their sees [Footnote: "See," so called from the Latin sedes, referring to their seat or chair of office. Similarly our word "cathedral" is derived from the Latin cathedra, the official chair which the bishop occupies in his own church.] in such ancient Christian centers as Rome. Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch. and Constantinople. (2) The provinces were divisions of the patriarchates and usually centered in the most important cities, such as Milan, Florence, Cologne, Upsala, Lyons, Seville, Lisbon, Canterbury, York; and the head of each was styled a metropolitan or archbishop. (3) The diocese--the most essential unit of local administration--was a subdivision of the province, commonly a city or a town, with a certain amount of surrounding country, under the immediate supervision of a bishop. (4) Smaller divisions, particularly parishes, were to be found in every diocese, embracing a village or a section of a city, and each parish had its church building and its priest. Thus the Catholic Church possessed a veritable army of officials from pope and cardinals down through patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops, to the parish priests and their assistants, the deacons. This hierarchy, because it labored in the world (sæculo), was called the "secular clergy."

[Sidenote: "Regular" Clergy]

Another variety of clergy--the "regulars"--supplemented the work of the seculars. The regulars were monks, [Footnote: The word "monk" is applied, of course, only to men; women who followed similar rules are commonly styled nuns.] that is, Christians who lived by a special rule (regula), who renounced the world, took vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, and strove to imitate the life of Christ as literally as possible. The regular clergy were organized under their own abbots, priors, provincials, or generals, being usually exempt from secular jurisdiction, except that of the pope. The regulars were the great missionaries of the Church, and many charitable and educational institutions were in their hands. Among the various orders of monks which had grown up in the course of time, the following should be enumerated: (1) The monks who lived in fixed abodes, tilled the soil, copied manuscripts, and conducted local schools. Most of the monks of this kind followed a rule, or society by-laws, which had been prepared by the celebrated St. Benedict about the year 525: they were called therefore Benedictines. (2) The monks who organized crusades, often bore arms themselves, and tended the holy places connected with incidents in the life of Christ: such orders were the Knights Templars, the Knights Hospitalers of St. John and of Malta, and the Teutonic Knights who subsequently undertook the conversion of the Slavs. (3) The monks who were called the begging friars or mendicants because they had no fixed abode but wandered from place to place, preaching to the common people and dependent for their own living upon alms. These orders came into prominence in the thirteenth century and included, among others, the Franciscan, whose lovable founder Saint Francis of Assisi had urged humility and love of the poor as its distinguishing characteristics, and the Dominican, or Order of the Preachers, devoted by the precept of its practical founder, Saint Dominic, to missionary zeal. All the mendicant orders, as well as the Benedictine monasteries, became famous in the history of education, and the majority of the distinguished scholars of the middle ages were monks. It was not uncommon, moreover, for regulars to enter the secular hierarchy and thus become parish priests or bishops, or even popes.

[Sidenote: Church Councils] [Sidenote: Conciliar Movement]

The clergy--bishops, priests, and deacons--constituted, in popular belief, the divinely ordained administration of the Catholic Church. The legislative authority in the Church similarly was vested in the pope and in the general councils, neither of which, however, could set aside a law of God, as affirmed in the gospels, or establish a doctrine at variance with the tradition of the early Christian writers. The general councils were assemblies of prelates of the Catholic world, and there had been considerable discussion as to the relative authority of their decrees and the decisions and directions of the pope. [Footnote: Papal documents have been called by various names, such as decretals, bulls, or encyclicals.] General church councils held in eastern Europe from the fourth to the ninth centuries had issued important decrees or canons defining Christian dogmas and establishing ecclesiastical discipline, which had been subsequently ratified and promulgated by the pope as by other bishops and by the emperors; and several councils had been held in western Europe from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries under the direct supervision of the bishop of Rome, all the canons of which had been enacted in accordance with his wishes. But early in the fifteenth century a movement was inaugurated by certain Catholic bishops and scholars in favor of making the councils superior to the pope and a regular source of supreme legislation for the Church. In this way, the councils of Constance (1414-1418) and Basel (1431 ff.) had endeavored to introduce representative, if not democratic, government into the Church. The popes, however, objected to this conciliar movement and managed to have it condemned by the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-1442). By the year 1512 the papal theory had triumphed and Catholics generally recognized again that the government of the Church was essentially monarchical. The laws of the Catholic Church were known as canons, and, of several codes of canon law which had been prepared, that of a monk named Gratian, compiled in the twelfth century, was the most widely used.

[Sidenote: The Pope and his Powers]

We are now in a position to summarize the claims and prerogatives of the bishop of Rome or pope. (1) He was the supreme lawgiver. He could issue decrees of his own, which might not be set aside by any other person. No council might enact canons without his approval. From any law, other than divine, he might dispense persons. (2) He was the supreme judge in Christendom. He claimed that appeals might be taken from decisions in foreign courts to his own Curia, as court of last resort. He himself frequently acted as arbitrator, as, for example, in the famous dispute between Spain and Portugal concerning the boundaries of their newly discovered possessions. (3) He was the supreme administrator. He claimed the right to supervise the general business of the whole Church. No archbishop might perform the functions of his office until he received his insignia--the pallium--from the pope. No bishop might be canonically installed until his election had been confirmed by the pope. The pope claimed the right to transfer a bishop from one diocese to another and to settle all disputed elections. He exercised immediate control over the regular clergy--the monks and nuns. He sent ambassadors, styled legates, to represent him at the various royal courts and to see that his instructions were obeyed. (4) He insisted upon certain temporal rights, as distinct from his directly religious prerogatives. He crowned the Holy Roman Emperor. He might depose an emperor or king and release a ruler's subjects from their oath of allegiance. He might declare null and void, and forbid the people to obey, a law of any state, if he thought it was injurious to the interests of the Church. He was temporal ruler of the city of Rome and the surrounding papal states, and over those territories he exercised a power similar to that of any duke or king. (5) He claimed financial powers. In order to defray the enormous expenses of his government, he charged fees for certain services at Rome, assessed the dioceses throughout the Catholic world, and levied a small tax--Peter's Pence--upon all Christian householders.

[Sidenote: Purpose of the Church]

So far we have concerned ourselves with the organization of the Catholic Church--its membership, its officers, the clergy, secular and regular, all culminating in the pope, the bishop of Rome. But why did this great institution exist? Why was it loved, venerated, and well served? The purpose of the Church, according to its own teaching, was to follow the instructions of its Divine Master, Jesus Christ, in saving souls. Only the Church might interpret those instructions; the Church alone might apply the means of salvation; outside the Church no one could be saved. [Footnote: Catholic theologians have recognized, however, the possibility of salvation of persons outside the visible Church. Thus, the catechism of Pope Pius X says: "Whoever, without any fault of his own, and in good faith, being outside the Church, happens to have been baptized or to have at least an implicit desire for baptism, and, furthermore, has been sincere in seeking to find the truth, and has done his best to do the will of God, such an one, although separated from the body of the Church, would still belong to her soul, and therefore be in the way of salvation."] The salvation of souls for eternity was thus the supreme business of the Church.

[Sidenote: Theology]

This salvation of souls involved a theology and a sacramental system, which we shall proceed to explain. Theology was the study of God. It sought to explain how and why man was created, what were his actual and desirable relations with God, what would be the fate of man in a future life. The most famous theologians of the Catholic Church, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), studied carefully the teachings of Christ, the Bible, the early Christian writings, and the decrees of popes and councils, and drew therefrom elaborate explanations of Christian theology--the dogmas and faith of the Catholic Church.

[Sidenote: The Sacramental System]

The very center of Catholic theology was the sacramental system, for that was the means, and essentially the only means, of saving souls. It was, therefore, for the purpose of the sacramental system that the Church and its hierarchy existed. The sacraments were believed to have been instituted by Christ Himself, and were defined as "outward signs instituted by Christ to give grace." The number generally accepted was seven: baptism, confirmation, holy eucharist, penance, extreme unction, holy orders, and matrimony. By means of the sacraments the Church accompanied the faithful throughout life. Baptism, the pouring of water, cleansed the child from original sin and from all previous actual sins, and made him a Christian, a child of God, and an heir of heaven. The priest was the ordinary minister of baptism, but in case of necessity any one who had the use of reason might baptize. Confirmation, conferred usually by a bishop upon young persons by the laying on of hands and the anointing with oil, gave them the Holy Ghost to render them strong and perfect Christians and soldiers of Jesus Christ. Penance, one of the most important sacraments, was intended to forgive sins committed after baptism. To receive the sacrament of penance worthily it was necessary for the penitent (1) to examine his conscience, (2) to have sorrow for his sins, (3) to make a firm resolution never more to offend God, (4) to confess his mortal sins orally to a priest, (5) to receive absolution from the priest, (6) to accept the particular penance--visitation of churches, saying of certain prayers, or almsgiving--which the priest might enjoin. The holy eucharist was the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the consecration of bread and wine by priest or bishop, its miraculous transformation (transubstantiation) at his word into the very Body and Blood of Christ, and its reception by the faithful. It was around the eucharist that the elaborate ritual and ceremonies of the Mass developed, that fine vestments and candles and incense and flowers were used, and that magnificent cathedrals were erected. Extreme unction was the anointing at the hands of a priest of the Christian who was in immediate danger of death, and it was supposed to give health and strength to the soul and sometimes to the body. By means of holy orders,--the special imposition of hands on the part of a bishop,--priests, bishops, and other ministers of the Church were ordained and received the power and grace to perform their sacred duties. Matrimony was the sacrament, held to be indissoluble by human power, by which man and woman were united in lawful Christian marriage.

Of the seven sacraments it will be noticed that two--baptism and penance--dealt with the forgiveness of sins, and that two--holy orders and matrimony--were received only by certain persons. Three--baptism, confirmation, and holy orders--could be received by a Christian only once. Two--confirmation and holy orders--required the ministry of a bishop; and all others, except baptism and possibly matrimony, required the ministry of at least a priest. The priesthood was, therefore, the absolutely indispensable agent of the Church in the administration of the sacramental system. It was the priesthood that absolved penitents from their sins, wrought the great daily miracle of transubstantiation, and offered to God the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

[Sidenote: Various Objections to the Church]

It must not be supposed that either the theology or the organization of the Catholic Church, as they existed in the year 1500, had been precisely the same throughout the Christian era. While educated Catholics insisted that Christ was indirectly the source of all faith and all practice, they were quite willing to admit that external changes and adaptations of institutions to varying conditions had taken place. Moreover, it must not be supposed that the proud eminence to which the Catholic Church had attained by 1500 in central and western Europe had been won easily or at that time was readily maintained. Throughout the whole course of Christian history there had been repeated objections to new definitions of dogma--many positively refused to accept the teaching of the Church as divine or infallible-- and there had been likewise a good deal of opposition to the temporal claims of the Church, resulting in increasing friction between the clergy and the lay rulers. Thus it often transpired that the kings who vied with one another in recognizing the spiritual and religious headship of the pope and in burning heretics who denied doctrines of the Catholic Church, were the very kings who quarreled with the pope concerning the latter's civil jurisdiction and directed harsh laws against its exercise.

[Sidenote: Sources of Conflict between Church and State]

As strong national monarchies rose in western Europe, this friction became more acute. On one side the royal power was determined to exalt the state and to bring into subjection to it not only the nobles and common people but the clergy as well; the national state must manage absolutely every temporal affair. On the other side, the clergy stoutly defended the special powers that they had long enjoyed in various states and which they believed to be rightly theirs. There were four chief sources of conflict between the temporal and spiritual jurisdictions, (1) Appointments of bishops, abbots, and other high church officers. Inasmuch as these were usually foremost citizens of their native kingdom, holding large estates and actually participating in the conduct of government, the kings frequently claimed the right to dictate their election. On the other hand the popes insisted upon their rights in the matter and often "reserved" to themselves the appointment to certain valuable bishoprics. (2) Taxation of land and other property of the clergy. The clergy insisted that by right they were exempt from taxation and that in practice they had not been taxed since the first public recognition of Christianity in the fourth century. The kings pointed out that the wealth of the clergy and the needs of the state had increased along parallel lines, that the clergy were citizens of the state and should pay a just share for its maintenance. (3) Ecclesiastical courts. For several centuries the Church had maintained its own courts for trying clerical offenders and for hearing certain cases, which nowadays are heard in state courts-- probating of wills, the marriage relations, blasphemy, etc. From these local church courts, the pope insisted that appeals might be taken to the Roman Curia. On their side, the kings were resolved to substitute royal justice for that of both feudal and ecclesiastical courts: they diminished, therefore, the privileges of the local church courts and forbade the taking of appeals to Rome. (4) How far might the pope, as universally acknowledged head of the Church, interfere in the internal affairs of particular states? While the pope claimed to be the sole judge of his own rights and powers, several kings forbade the publication of papal documents within their states or the reception of papal legates unless the royal assent had been vouchsafed.

[Sidenote: Royal Restrictions on the Church]

Gradually the national monarchs secured at least a partial control over episcopal appointments, and in both England and France papal jurisdiction was seriously restricted in other ways. In England the power of the ecclesiastical courts had been reduced (1164); no property might be bestowed upon the Church without royal permission (1279); the pope might not make provision in England for his personal appointees to office (1351); and appeals to Rome had been forbidden (1392). [Footnote: All these anti-papal enactments were very poorly enforced.] In France the clergy had been taxed early in the fourteenth century, and the papacy, which had condemned such action, had been humiliated by a forced temporary removal from Rome to Avignon, where it was controlled by French rulers for nearly seventy years (1309-1377); and in 1438 the French king, Charles VII, in a document, styled the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, solemnly proclaimed the "liberties of the Gallican Church," that a general council was superior to the pope, that the pope might not interfere in episcopal elections, that he might not levy taxes on French dioceses. The Pragmatic Sanction was condemned by the pope, but for three-quarters of a century after its issuance there were strained relations between the Church in France and the sovereign pontiff.

[Sidenote: Political Differences Distinct from Religious Differences]

Similar conflicts between spiritual and temporal jurisdictions were common to all Christian states, but the national strength and the patriotism of the western monarchies caused them to proceed further than any other state in restricting the papal privileges. Despite the conflict over temporal affairs, which at times was exceedingly bitter, the kings and rulers of England and France never appear to have seriously questioned the religious authority of the Church or the spiritual supremacy of the pope. Religiously, the Catholic Church seemed in 1500 to hold absolute sway over all central and western Europe.

[Sidenote: Religious Opposition to Catholicism]

Yet this very religious authority of the Catholic Church had been again and again brought into question and repeatedly rejected. Originally, a united Christianity had conquered western Asia, northern Africa, and eastern Europe; by 1500 nearly all these wide regions were lost to Catholic Christianity as that phrase was understood in western Europe. The loss was due to (1) the development of a great Christian schism, and (2) the rise of a new religion--Mohammedanism.

[Sidenote: The Schism between the East and the West]

Eastern Europe had been lost through an ever-widening breach in Christian practice from the fifth to the eleventh century. The Eastern Church used the Greek language in its liturgy; that of the West used the Latin language. The former remained more dependent upon the state; the latter grew less dependent. Minor differences of doctrine appeared. And the Eastern Christians thought the pope was usurping unwarrantable prerogatives, while the Western Christians accused the Oriental patriarchs of departing from their earlier loyalty to the pope and destroying the unity of Christendom. Several attempts had been made to reunite the Catholic Church of the West and the Orthodox Church of the East, but with slight success. In 1500, the Christians of Greece, the Balkan peninsula, and Russia were thought to be outside the Catholic Church and were defined, therefore, by the pope as schismatics.

[Sidenote: Mohammedanism]

Far more numerous and dangerous to Catholic Christianity than the schismatic Easterners were the Mohammedans. Mohammed himself had lived in Arabia in the early part the seventh century and had taught that he was the inspired prophet of the one true God. In a celebrated book,-- the Koran,--which was compiled from the sayings of the prophet, are to be found the precepts and commandments of the Mohammedan religion. Mohammedanism spread rapidly: within a hundred years of its founder's death it had conquered western Asia and northern Africa and had gained a temporary foothold in Spain; thenceforth it stretched eastward across Persia and Turkestan into India and southward into central Africa; and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as we have seen, it possessed itself of Constantinople, the Balkans, Greece, and part of Hungary, and threatened Christendom in the Germanies and in the Mediterranean.

[Sidenote: Western Heresies]

Even in western Europe, the Catholic Church had had to encounter spasmodic opposition from "heretics," as those persons were called who, although baptized as Christians, refused to accept all the dogmas of Catholic Christianity. Such were the Arian Christians, who in early times had been condemned for rejecting the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, and who had eventually been won back to Catholicism only with the greatest efforts. Then in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Albigensian heretics in southern France had assailed the sacramental system and the organization of the Church and had been suppressed only by armed force. In the fourteenth century, John Wycliffe appeared in England and John Hus in Bohemia, both preaching that the individual Christian needs no priestly mediation between himself and God and that the very sacraments of the Church, however desirable, are not essentially necessary to salvation. The Lollards, as Wycliffe's English followers were called, were speedily extirpated by fire and sword, through the stern orthodoxy of an English king, but the Hussites long defied the pope and survivals of their heresy were to be found in 1500.

[Sidenote: Skeptics]

In addition to these heretics and the Jews, [Footnote: For detailed accounts of the Jews during the middle ages as well as in modern times, see the Jewish Encyclopædia, ed. by Isidore Singer, 12 vols. (1901-1906).] many so-called skeptics no doubt existed. These were people who outwardly conformed to Catholicism but inwardly doubted and even scoffed at the very foundations of Christianity. They were essentially irreligious, but they seem to have suffered less from persecution than the heretics. Many of the Italian humanists, concerning whom we shall later say a word, [Footnote: See below] were in the fifteenth century more or less avowed skeptics.

THE PROTESTANT REVOLT

[Sidenote: A Religious and Political Movement]

We have seen in the preceding pages that prior to 1500 there had been many conflicts between kings and popes concerning their respective temporal rights and likewise there had been serious doubts in the minds of various people as to the authority and teachings of the Catholic Church. But these two facts--political and religious--had never been united in a general revolt against the Church until the sixteenth century. Then it was that Christians of Germany, Scandinavia, Scotland, and England, even of the Low Countries and France, successfully revolted against the papal monarchy and set up establishments of their own, usually under the protection of their lay rulers, which became known as the Protestant churches. The movement is called, therefore, the Protestant Revolt. It was begun and practically completed between 1520 and 1570.

[Sidenote: Political Causes of Protestant Revolt]

In explaining this remarkable and sudden break with the religious and ecclesiastical development of a thousand years, it is well to bear in mind that its causes were at once political, economic, and religious. Politically, it was merely an accentuation of the conflict which had long been increasing in virulence between the spiritual and temporal authorities. It cannot be stated too emphatically that the Catholic Church during many centuries prior to the sixteenth had been not only a religious body, like a present-day church, but also a vast political power which readily found sources of friction with other political institutions. The Catholic Church, as we have seen, had its own elaborate organization in every country of western and central Europe; and its officials--pope, bishops, priests, and monks--denied allegiance to the secular government; the Church owned many valuable lands and estates, which normally were exempt from taxation and virtually outside the jurisdiction of the lay government; the Church had its own independent and compulsory income, and its own courts to try its own officers and certain kinds of cases for every one. Such political jurisdiction of the Church had been quite needful and satisfactory in the period--from the fifth to the twelfth century, let us say--when the secular governments were weak and the Church found itself the chief unifying force in Christendom, the veritable heir to the universal dominion of the ancient Roman Empire.

But gradually the temporal rulers themselves repressed feudalism. Political ambition increased in laymen, and local pride was exalted into patriotism. By the year 1200 was begun the growth of that notable idea of national monarchy, the general outline of which we sketched in the opening chapter. We there indicated that at the commencement of the sixteenth century, England, France, Spain, and Portugal had become strong states, with well-organized lay governments under powerful kings, with patriotic populations, and with well-developed, distinctive languages and literatures. The one thing that seemed to be needed to complete this national sovereignty was to bring the Church entirely under royal control. The autocratic sovereigns desired to enlist the wealth and influence of the Church in their behalf; they coveted her lands, her taxes, and her courts. Although Italy, the Netherlands, and the Germanies were not yet developed as strong united monarchies, many of their patriotic leaders longed for such a development, worked for it, and believed that the principal obstacle to it was the great Christian Church with the pope at its head. Viewed from the political standpoint, the Protestant Revolt was caused by the rise of national feeling, which found itself in natural conflict with the older cosmopolitan or catholic idea of the Church. It was nationalism versus Catholicism.

[Sidenote: Economic Causes of Protestant Revolt]

Economically, the causes of the Protestant Revolt were twofold. In the first place, the Catholic Church had grown so wealthy that many people, particularly kings and princes, coveted her possessions. In the second place, financial abuses in ecclesiastical administration bore heavily upon the common people and created serious scandal. Let us say a word about each one of these difficulties.

At the opening of the sixteenth century, many bishops and abbots in wealth and power were not unlike great lay lords: they held vast fair dominions--in the Germanics a third of the whole country, in France a fifth, etc.--and they were attended by armies of retainers. Most of them were sons of noblemen who had had them consecrated bishops so as to insure them fine positions. Even the monks, who now often lived in rich monasteries as though they had never taken vows of poverty, were sometimes of noble birth and quite worldly in their lives. The large estates and vast revenues of Catholic ecclesiastics were thus at first the lure and then the prey of their royal and princely neighbors. The latter grew quite willing to utilize any favorable opportunity which might enable them to confiscate church property and add it to their own possessions. Later such confiscation was euphemistically styled "secularization."

On the other hand, many plain people, such as peasants and artisans, begrudged the numerous and burdensome ecclesiastical taxes, and an increasing number felt that they were not getting the worth of their money. There was universal complaint, particularly in the Germanies, that the people were exploited by the Roman Curia. Each ecclesiastic, be he bishop, abbot, or priest, had right to a benefice, that is, to the revenue of a parcel of land attached to his post. When he took possession of a benefice, he paid the pope a special assessment, called the "annate," amounting to a year's income--which of course came from the peasants living on the land. The pope likewise "reserved" to himself the right of naming the holders of certain benefices: these he gave preferably to Italians who drew the revenues but remained in their own country; the people thus supported foreign prelates in luxury and sometimes paid a second time in order to maintain resident ecclesiastics. The archbishops paid enormous sums to the pope for their badges of office (pallia). Fat fees for dispensations or for court trials found their way across the Alps. And the bulk of the burden ultimately rested upon the backs of the people. At least in the Germanics the idea became very prevalent that the pope and Curia were really robbing honest German Christians for the benefit of scandalously immoral Italians.

There were certainly grave financial abuses in church government in the fifteenth century and in the early part of the sixteenth. A project of German reform, drawn up in 1438, had declared: "It is a shame which cries to heaven, this oppression of tithes, dues, penalties, excommunication, and tolls of the peasant, on whose labor all men depend for their existence." An "apocalyptic pamphlet of 1508 shows on its cover the Church upside down, with the peasant performing the services, while the priest guides the plow outside and a monk drives the horses." It was, in fact, in the Germanics that all the social classes--princes, burghers, knights, and peasants--had special economic grievances against the Church, and in many places were ready to combine in rejecting papal claims.

This emphasis upon the political and particularly upon the economic causes need not belittle the strictly religious factor in the movement. The success of the revolt was due to the fact that many kings, nobles, and commoners, for financial and political advantages to themselves, became the valuable allies of real religious reformers. It required dogmatic differences as well as social grievances to destroy the dominion of the Church.

[Sidenote: Abuses in the Catholic Church]

Nearly all thoughtful men in the sixteenth century recognized the existence of abuses in the Catholic Church. The scandals connected with the papal court at Rome were notorious at the opening of the century. Several of the the popes lived grossly immoral lives. Simony (the sale of church offices for money) and nepotism (favoritism shown by a pope to his relatives) were not rare. The most lucrative ecclesiastical positions throughout Europe were frequently conferred upon Italians who seldom discharged their duties. One person might be made bishop of several foreign dioceses and yet continue to reside in Rome. Leo X, who was pope when the Protestant Revolt began, and son of Lorenzo de' Medici, surnamed the Magnificent, had been ordained to the priesthood at the age of seven, named cardinal when he was thirteen, and speedily loaded with a multitude of rich benefices and preferments; this same pope, by his munificence and extravagance, was forced to resort to the most questionable means for raising money: he created many new offices and shamelessly sold them; he increased the revenue from indulgences, jubilees, and regular taxation; he pawned palace furniture, table plate, pontifical jewels, even statues of the apostles; several banking firms and many individual creditors were ruined by his death.

[Sidenote: Attacks on Immorality of Clergymen]

What immorality and worldliness prevailed at Rome was reflected in the lives of many lesser churchmen. To one of the popes of the fifteenth century, a distinguished cardinal represented the disorders of the clergy, especially in the Germanics. "These disorders," he said, "excite the hatred of the people against all ecclesiastical order; if it is not corrected, it is to be feared that the laity, following the example of the Hussites, will attack the clergy as they now openly menace us with doing." If the clergy of Germany were not reformed promptly, he predicted that after the Bohemian heresy was crushed another would speedily arise far more dangerous. "For they will say," he continued, "that the clergy is incorrigible and is willing to apply no remedy to its disorders. They will attack us when they no longer have any hope of our correction. Men's minds are waiting for what shall be done; it seems as if shortly something tragic will be brought forth. The venom which they have against us is becoming evident; soon they will believe they are making a sacrifice agreeable to God by maltreating or despoiling the ecclesiastics as people odious to God and man and immersed to the utmost in evil. The little reverence still remaining for the sacred order will be destroyed. Responsibility for all these disorders will be charged upon the Roman Curia, which will be regarded as the cause of all these evils because it has neglected to apply the necessary remedy." To many other thoughtful persons, a moral reformation in the head and members of the Church seemed vitally necessary.

Complaints against the evil lives of the clergy as well as against their ignorance and credulity were echoed by most of the great scholars and humanists of the time. The patriotic knight and vagabond scholar, Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523), contributed to a clever series of satirical "Letters of Obscure Men," which were read widely, and which poked fun at the lack of learning among the monks and the ease with which the papal court emptied German pockets.

[Sidenote: Ulrich von Hutten and Erasmus]

Then, too, the great Erasmus (1466-1536) employed all his wit and sarcasm, in his celebrated "Praise of Folly," against the theologians and monks, complaining that the foolish people thought that religion consisted simply in pilgrimages, the invocation of saints, and the veneration of relics. Erasmus would have suppressed the monasteries, put an end to the domination of the clergy, and swept away scandalous abuses. He wanted Christianity to regain its early spiritual force, and largely for that purpose he published in 1516 the Greek text of the New Testament with a new Latin translation and with notes which mercilessly flayed hair-splitting theologians.

Thus throughout the fifteenth century and the early part of the sixteenth, much was heard from scholars, princes, and people, of the need for "reformation" of the Church. That did not signify a change of the old regulations but rather their restoration and enforcement. For a long time it was not a question of abolishing the authority of the pope, or altering ecclesiastical organization, or changing creeds. It was merely a question of reforming the lives of the clergy and of suppressing the means by which Italians drew money from other nations.

[Sidenote: Religious Causes of Protestant Revolt]

In the sixteenth century, however, a group of religious leaders, such as Luther, Cranmer, Zwingli, Calvin, and Knox, went much further than Erasmus and the majority of the humanists had gone: they applied the word "reformation" not only to a reform in morals but to an open break which they made with the government and doctrines of the Catholic Church. The new theology, which these reformers championed, was derived mainly from the teachings of such heretics as Wycliffe and Hus and was supposed to depend directly upon the Bible rather than upon the Church. The religious causes of the Protestant Revolt accordingly may be summed up as: first, the existence of abuses within the Catholic Church; second, the attacks of distinguished men upon the immorality and worldliness of the Catholic clergy; and third, the substitution by certain religious leaders of new doctrines and practices, which were presumed to have been authorized by the Bible, but which were at variance with those of the medieval Church.

[Sidenote: Date and Extent of the Protestant Revolt]

For the great variety of reasons, which we have now indicated,-- political, economic, and religious,--the peoples of northern Germany, Scandinavia, the Dutch Netherlands, most of Switzerland, Scotland, England, and a part of France and of Hungary, separated themselves, between the years 1520 and 1570, from the great religious and political body which had been known historically for over a thousand years as the Catholic Christian Church. The name "Protestant" was first applied exclusively to those followers of Martin Luther in the Holy Roman Empire who in 1529 protested against an attempt of the Diet of Speyer to prevent the introduction of religious novelties, but subsequently the word passed into common parlance among historians and the general reading public as betokening all Christians who rejected the papal supremacy and who were not in communion with the Orthodox Church of eastern Europe.

Of this Protestant Christianity three main forms appeared in the sixteenth century--Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism. Concerning the origin and development of each one of these major forms, a brief sketch must be given.

LUTHERANISM

[Sidenote: Martin Luther]

Lutheranism takes its name from its great apostle, Martin Luther. Luther was born in Eisleben in Germany in 1483 of a poor family whose ancestors had been peasants. Martin early showed himself bold, headstrong, willing to pit his own opinions against those of the world, but yet possessing ability, tact, and a love of sound knowledge. Educated at the university of Erfurt, where he became acquainted with the humanistic movement, young Martin entered one of the mendicant orders--the Augustinian--in 1505 and went to live in a monastery. In 1508 Luther was sent with some other monks to Wittenberg to assist a university which had been opened there recently by the elector of Saxony, and a few years later was appointed professor of theology in the institution.

[Sidenote: Justification by Faith]

While lecturing and preaching at Wittenberg, where he was very popular, Luther developed from the writings of St. Paul and St. Augustine an important doctrinal conviction which differed widely from the faith of the Catholic Church. It concerned the means of eternal salvation. The Church taught, as we have seen, that she possessed the sole means, and that every Christian must perform certain "good works" in order to secure salvation. Luther, on the other hand, became convinced that man was incapable, in the sight of God, of any good works whatsoever, and could be saved only by faith in God's promises. In other words, this monk placed his doctrine of "justification by faith" in opposition to the generally accepted belief in "justification by faith and works."

[Sidenote: Tetzel's "Sale" of Indulgences]

So far, Luther certainly had no thought of revolting against the authority of the Church. In fact, when he visited Rome in 1511, it was as a pious pilgrim rather than as a carping critic. But a significant event in the year 1517 served to make clear a wide discrepancy between what he was teaching and what the Church taught. That year a certain papal agent, Tetzel by name, was disposing of indulgences in the great archbishopric of Mainz. An indulgence, according to Catholic theology, was a remission of the temporal punishment in purgatory due to sin, and could be granted only by authority of the Church; the grant of indulgences depended upon the contrition and confession of the applicant, and often at that time upon money-payments. Against what he believed was a corruption of Christian doctrine and a swindling of the poorer people, Luther protested in a series of ninety-five Theses which he posted on the church door in Wittenberg (31 October, 1517).

[Sidenote: The Ninety-five Theses]

The Theses had been written in Latin for the educated class but they were now speedily translated into German and spread like wildfire among all classes throughout the country. Luther's underlying principle of "salvation through simple faith" was in sharp contrast with the theory of "good works," on which the indulgences rested. "The Christian who has true repentance," wrote Luther, "has already received pardon from God altogether apart from an indulgence, and does not need one; Christ demands this true repentance from every one." Luther's attitude provoked spirited discussion throughout the Germanics, and the more discussion, the more interest and excitement. The pope, who had dismissed the subject at first as a mere squabble among the monks, was moved at length to summon Luther to Rome to answer for the Theses, but the elector of Saxony intervened and prevailed upon the pope not to press the matter.

[Sidenote: Disputation at Leipzig, 1519]

The next important step in the development of Luther's religious ideas was a debate on the general question of papal supremacy, held at Leipzig in 1519, between himself and an eminent Catholic apologist, Johann Eck. Eck skillfully forced Luther to admit that certain views of his, especially those concerning man's direct relation with God, without the mediation of the Church, were the same as those which John Hus had held a century earlier and which had been condemned both by the pope and by the great general council of Constance. Luther thereby virtually admitted that a general council as well as a pope might err. For him, the divine authority of the Roman Catholic Church ceased to be.

[Sidenote: Separation of Luther from the Catholic Church]

Separation from the traditional Church was the only course now open to Luther and this was consummated in the year 1520. In a series of three bold pamphlets, he vigorously and definitely attacked the position of the Church. In the first--An Address to the Nobility of the German Nation--Luther stated that there was nothing inherently sacred about the Christian priesthood and that the clergy should be deprived immediately of their special privileges; he urged the German princes to free their country from foreign control and shrewdly called their attention to the wealth and power of the Church which they might justly appropriate to themselves. In the second--On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church of God--he assailed the papacy and the whole sacramental system. The third--On the Freedom of a Christian Man--contained the essence of Luther's new theology that salvation was not a painful progress toward a goal by means of sacraments and right conduct but a condition "in which man found himself so soon as he despaired absolutely of his own efforts and threw himself on God's assurances"; the author claimed that man's utter personal dependence on God's grace rendered the system of the Church superfluous.

In the midst of these attacks upon the Church, the pope excommunicated Luther, and in the following year (1521) influenced the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire, assembled at Worms, to pronounce him an outlaw. But the rebel calmly burnt the papal bull and from the imperial ban he was protected by the elector of Saxony. He at once devoted himself to making a new German translation of the Bible, which became very popular and is still prized as a monument in the history of German literature. [Footnote: The first edition of the Bible in German had been printed as early as 1466. At least eighteen editions in German (including four Low German versions) had appeared before Luther issued his German New Testament in 1522.]

[Sidenote: Spread of Lutheranism]

Within the next few years the Lutheran teachings carried everything before them throughout the northern and central Germanies. Nor are the reasons for Luther's success in defying pope and emperor and for the rapid acceptance of his new theology hard to understand. The movement was essentially popular and national. It appealed to the pious-minded who desired a simplification of Christian dogma and a comprehensible method of salvation. It also appealed to the worldly minded who longed to seize ecclesiastical lands and revenues. Above all, it appealed to the patriots who were tired of foreign despotism and of abuses which they traced directly to the Roman Curia. Then, too, the Emperor Charles V, who remained a loyal Catholic, was too immersed in the difficulties of foreign war and in the manifold administrative problems of his huge dominions to be able to devote much time to the extirpation of heresy in the Germanies. Finally, the character of Luther contributed to effective leadership--he was tireless in flooding the country with pamphlets, letters, and inflammatory diatribes, tactful in keeping his party together, and always bold and courageous. Princes, burghers, artisans, and peasants joined hands in espousing the new cause.

[Sidenote: Luther and the German Peasants]

But the peasants espoused it in a manner altogether too logical and too violent to suit Luther or the desires of the princes. The German peasants had grievances against the old order compared with which those of the knights and towns-folk were imaginary. For at least a century several causes had contributed to make their lot worse and worse. While their taxes and other burdens were increasing, the ability of the emperor to protect them was decreasing; they were plundered by every class in the community, especially by the higher clergy. Thus, under the influence of social and economic conditions, various uprisings of the peasants had taken place during the latter part of the fifteenth century. These insurrections became almost regular in the southwestern Germanies, and were called Bundschuhe, a shoe fastened upon the end of a pole serving as a standard of revolt. When Luther urged the princes to assail the ecclesiastics, to seize church lands, and to put an end to financial abuses, the peasants naturally listened to his words with open ears and proceeded with glad hearts to apply his advice themselves.

The new Lutheran theology may have been too refined for the peasants, but they imagined they understood its purport. And spurred on by fanatics, whom the religious ferment of the times produced in large numbers, [Footnote: Many of these radical religious leaders were more consistent and thoroughgoing than Luther in maintaining the right of each Christian to interpret the Scriptures for himself. Since they generally refused to recognize infant baptism as valid and insisted that baptism should be administered only to adults, they were subsequently often referred to as "Anabaptists." Many of the "Anabaptists" condemned oaths and capital punishment; some advocated communism of worldly goods, in several instances even the community of women. Nicholas Storch (d. 1525), a weaver, and Thomas Munzer (d. 1525), a Lutheran preacher, spread these doctrines widely among the peasants. Luther vehemently denounced the "Anabaptists."] the peasants again took arms against feudal oppression. That the peasants' demands were essentially moderate and involved no more than is granted everywhere to-day as a matter of course, may be inferred from their declaration of principles, the Twelve Articles, among which were: abolition of serfdom, free right of fishing and hunting, payment in wages for services rendered, and abolition of arbitrary punishment. So long as the peasants directed their efforts against the Catholic ecclesiastics, Luther expressed sympathy with them, but when the revolt, which broke out in 1524, became general all over central and southern Germany and was directed not only against the Catholic clergy but also against the lay lords,--many of whom were now Lutheran,--the religious leader foresaw a grave danger to his new religion in a split between peasants and nobles. Luther ended by taking strong sides with the nobles--he had most to expect from them. He was shocked by the excesses of the revolt, he said. Insisting upon toleration for his own revolt, he condemned the peasants to most horrible fates in this world and in the world hereafter. [Footnote: Although Luther was particularly bitter against the "Anabaptist" exhorters, upon whom he fastened responsibility for the Peasants' Revolt, and although many of them met death thereby, the "Anabaptists" were by no means exterminated. Largely through the activity of a certain Melchior Hofmann, a widely traveled furrier, "Anabaptist" doctrines were disseminated in northern Germany and the Netherlands. From 1533 to 1535 they reigned supreme, attended by much bloodshed and plenty of personal license, in the important city of Munster in western Germany. Subsequently, Carlstadt (1480-1541), an early associate of Luther, though his later antagonist, set forth Anabaptist views with greater moderation; and in course of time the sect became more or less tinged with Calvinistic theology.] He furiously begged the princes to put down the insurrection. "Whoever can, should smite, strangle, or stab, secretly or publicly!"

[Sidenote: The Peasants' Revolt]

The Peasants' Revolt was crushed in 1525 with utmost cruelty. Probably fifty thousand lost their lives in the vain effort. The general result was that the power of the territorial lords became greater than ever, although in a few cases, particularly in the Tyrol and in Baden, the condition of the peasants was slightly improved. Elsewhere, however, this was not the case; and the German peasants were assigned for over two centuries to a lot worse than that of almost any people in Europe. Another result was the decline of Luther's influence among the peasantry in southern and central Germany. They turned rapidly from one who, they believed, had betrayed them. On the other hand, many Catholic princes, who had been wavering in their religious support, now had before their eyes what they thought was an object lesson of the results of Luther's appeal to revolution, and so they cast their lot decisively with the ancient Church. The Peasants' Revolt registered a distinct check to the further spread of Lutheranism.

[Sidenote: Diets of Speyer 1526, 1529] [Sidenote: The Word "Protestant"]

The Diet of the Holy Roman Empire which assembled at Speyer in 1526 saw the German princes divided into a Lutheran and a Roman Catholic party, but left the legal status of the new faith still in doubt, contenting itself with the vague declaration that "each prince should so conduct himself as he could answer for his behavior to God and to the emperor." But at the next Diet, held at the same place in 1529, the emperor directed that the edict against heretics should be enforced and that the old ecclesiastical revenues should not be appropriated for the new worship. The Lutheran princes drafted a legal protest, in which they declared that they meant to abide by the law of 1526. From this protest came the name Protestant.

[Sidenote: Confession of Augsburg, 1530]

The next year, Luther's great friend, Melancthon, presented to the Diet of Augsburg an account of the beliefs of the German reformers, which later became known as the Confession of Augsburg and constitutes to the present day the distinctive creed of the Lutheran Church. The emperor was still unconvinced, however, of the truth or value of the reformed doctrine, and declared his intention of ending the heresy by force of arms.

[Sidenote: Religious Peace of Augsburg, 1555]

In this predicament, the Lutheran princes formed a league at Schmalkald for mutual protection (1531); and from 1546 to 1555 a desultory civil war was waged. The Protestants received some assistance from the French king, who, for political reasons, was bent on humiliating the emperor. The end of the religious conflict appeared to have been reached by the peace of Augsburg (1555), which contained the following provisions: (1) Each prince was to be free to dictate the religion of his subjects [Footnote: Cuius regio eius religio.]; (2) All church property appropriated by the Protestants before 1552 was to remain in their hands; (3) No form of Protestantism except Lutheranism was to be tolerated; (4) Lutheran subjects of ecclesiastical states were not to be obliged to renounce their faith; (5) By an "ecclesiastical reservation" any ecclesiastical prince on becoming a Protestant was to give up his see.

[Sidenote: Lutheranism in the Germanies]

Thus, between 1520 and 1555, Martin Luther [Footnote: He died in 1546, aged 62.] had preached his new theology at variance with the Catholic, and had found general acceptance for it throughout the northern half of the Germanies; its creed had been settled and defined in 1530, and its official toleration had been recognized in 1555. The toleration was limited, however, to princes, and for many years Lutheran rulers showed themselves quite as intolerant within their own dominions as did the Catholics.

[Sidenote: Lutheranism in Scandinavia]

The triumph of Lutheranism in the Scandinavian countries has been traced largely to political and economic causes. When Martin Luther broke with the Catholic Church, Christian II (1513-1523) was reigning as elected king over Denmark and Norway and had recently conquered Sweden by force of arms. The king encountered political difficulties with the Church although he maintained Catholic worship and doctrine and apparently recognized the spiritual supremacy of the pope. But Christian II had trouble with most of his subjects, especially the Swedes, who were conscious of separate nationality and desirous of political independence; and the king eventually lost his throne in a general uprising. The definite separation of Sweden from Denmark and Norway followed immediately. The Swedes chose the celebrated Gustavus Vasa (1523-1560) as their king, while the Danish and Norwegian crowns passed to the uncle of Christian II, who assumed the title of Frederick I (1523-1533).

[Sidenote: Denmark]

In Denmark, King Frederick was very desirous of increasing the royal power, and the subservient ecclesiastical organization which Martin Luther was advocating seemed to him for his purposes infinitely preferable to the ancient self-willed Church. But Frederick realized that the Catholic Church was deeply rooted in the affections of his people and that changes would have to be effected slowly and cautiously. He therefore collected around him Lutheran teachers from Germany and made his court the center of the propaganda of the new doctrine, and so well was the work of the new teachers done that the king was able in 1527 to put the two religions on an equal footing before the law. Upon Frederick's death in 1533, the Catholics made a determined effort to prevent the accession of his son, Christian III, who was not only an avowed Lutheran but was known to stand for absolutist principles in government.

The popular protest against royal despotism failed in Denmark and the triumph of Christian III in 1536 sealed the fate of Catholicism in that country and in Norway. It was promptly enacted that the Catholic bishops should forfeit their temporal and spiritual authority and all their property should be transferred to the crown "for the good of the commonwealth." After discussions with Luther the new religion was definitely organized and declared the state religion in 1537. It might be added that Catholicism died with difficulty in Denmark,--many peasants as well as high churchmen resented the changes, and Helgesen, the foremost Scandinavian scholar and humanist of the time, protested vigorously against the new order. But the crown was growing powerful, and the crown prevailed. The enormous increase of royal revenue, consequent upon the confiscation of the property of the Church, enabled the king to make Denmark the leading Scandinavian country throughout the second half of the sixteenth century and the first quarter of the seventeenth. In time national patriotism came to be intertwined with Lutheranism.

[Sidenote: Sweden]

In Sweden the success of the new religion was due to the crown quite as much as in Denmark and Norway. Gustavus Vasa had obtained the Swedish throne through the efforts of a nationalist party, but there was still a hostile faction, headed by the chief churchman, the archbishop of Upsala, who favored the maintenance of the union with Denmark. In order to deprive the unionists of their leader, Gustavus begged the pope to remove the rebellious archbishop and to appoint one in sympathy with the nationalist cause. This the pope peremptorily refused to do, and the breach with Rome began. Gustavus succeeded in suppressing the insurrection, and then persevered in introducing Protestantism. The introduction was very gradual, especially among the peasantry, and its eventual success was largely the result of the work of one strong man assisted by a subservient parliament.

At first Gustavus maintained Catholic worship and doctrines, contenting himself with the suppression of the monasteries, the seizure of two- thirds of the church tithes, and the circulation of a popular Swedish translation of the New Testament. In 1527 all ecclesiastical property was transferred to the crown and two Catholic bishops were cruelly put to death. Meanwhile Lutheran teachers were encouraged to take up their residence in Sweden and in 1531 the first Protestant archbishop of Upsala was chosen. Thenceforth, the progress of Lutheranism was more rapid, although a Catholic reaction was threatened several times in the second half of the sixteenth century. The Confession of Augsburg was adopted as the creed of the Swedish Church in 1593, and in 1604 Catholics were deprived of offices and estates and banished from the realm.

CALVINISM

The second general type of Protestantism which appeared in the sixteenth century was the immediate forerunner of the modern Presbyterian, Congregational, and Reformed Churches and at one time or another considerably affected the theology of the Episcopalians and Baptists and even of Lutherans. Taken as a group, it is usually called Calvinism. Of its rise and spread, some idea may be gained from brief accounts of the lives of two of its great apostles--Calvin and Knox. But first it will be necessary to say a few words concerning an older reformer, Zwingli by name, who prepared the way for Calvin's work in the Swiss cantons.

[Sidenote: Zwingli]

Switzerland comprised in the sixteenth century some thirteen cantons, all of which were technically under the suzerainty of the Holy Roman Empire, but constituted in practice so many independent republics, bound together only by a number of protective treaties. To the town of Einsiedeln in the canton of Schwyz came Huldreich Zwingli in the year 1516 as a Catholic priest. Slightly younger than Luther, he was well born, had received an excellent university education in Vienna and in Basel, and had now been in holy orders about ten years. He had shown for some time more interest in humanism than in the old-fashioned theology, but hardly any one would have suspected him of heresy, for it was well known that he was a regular pensioner of the pope.

Zwingli's opposition to the Roman Church seems to have been based at first largely on political grounds. He preached eloquently against the practice of hiring out Swiss troops to foreign rulers and abused the Church for its share in this shameless traffic in soldiers. Then he was led on to attack all manner of abuses in ecclesiastical organization, but it was not until he was installed in 1518 as preacher in the great cathedral at Zürich that he clearly denied papal supremacy and proceeded to proclaim the Scriptures as the sole guide of faith and morals. He preached against fasting, the veneration of saints, and the celibacy of the clergy. Some of his hearers began to put his teachings into practice: church edifices were profaned, statues demolished, windows smashed, and relics burned. Zwingli himself took a wife.

[Sidenote: Zwinglian Revolt in Switzerland]

In 1523 a papal appeal to Zürich to abandon Zwingli was answered by the canton's formal declaration of independence from the Catholic Church. Henceforth the revolt spread rapidly throughout Switzerland, except in the five forest cantons, the very heart of the country, where the ancient religion was still deeply intrenched. Serious efforts were made to join the followers of Zwingli with those of Luther, and thus to present a united front to the common enemy, but there seemed to be irreconcilable differences between Lutheranism and the views of Zwingli. The latter, which were succinctly expressed in sixty-seven Theses published at Zürich in 1523, insisted more firmly than the former on the supreme authority of Scripture, and broke more thoroughly and radically with the traditions of the Catholic Church. Zwingli aimed at a reformation of government and discipline as well as of theology, and entertained a notion of an ideal state in which the democracy would order human activities, whether political or religious. Zwingli differed essentially from Luther in never distrusting "the people." Perhaps the most distinctive mark of the Swiss reformer's theology was his idea that the Lord's Supper is not a miracle but simply a symbol and a memorial.

In 1531 Zwingli urged the Protestant Swiss to convert the five forest cantons to the new religion by force of arms. In answer to his entreaties, civil war ensued, but the Catholic mountaineers won a great victory that very year and the reformer himself was killed. A truce was then arranged, the provisions of which foreshadowed the religious settlement in the Germanies--each canton was to be free to determine its own religion. Switzerland has remained to this day part Catholic and part Protestant.

[Sidenote: Calvin]

By the sudden death of Zwingli, Swiss Protestantism was left without a leader, but not for long, because the more celebrated Calvin took up his residence in Geneva in 1536. From that time until his death in 1564 Calvin was the center of a movement which, starting from these small Zwinglian beginnings among the Swiss mountains, speedily spread over more countries and affected more people than did Lutheranism. In Calvinism, Catholicism was to find her most implacable foe.

John Calvin, who, next to Martin Luther, was the most conspicuous Protestant leader of the sixteenth century, was a Frenchman. Born of middle-class parentage at Noyon in the province of Picardy in 1509, he was intended from an early age for an ecclesiastical career. A pension from the Catholic Church enabled him to study at Paris, where he displayed an aptitude for theology and literature. When he was nineteen years of age, however, his father advised him to abandon the idea of entering the priesthood in favor of becoming a lawyer--so young Calvin spent several years studying law.

[Sidenote: Calvin in France]

It was in 1529 that Calvin is said to have experienced a sudden "conversion." Although as yet there had been no organized revolt in France against the Catholic Church, that country, like many others, was teeming with religious critics. Thousands of Frenchmen were in sympathy with any attempt to improve the Church by education, by purer morals, or by better preaching. Lutheranism was winning a few converts, and various evangelical sects were appearing in divers places. The chief problem was whether reform should be sought within the traditional Church or by rebellion against it. Calvin believed that his conversion was a divine call to forsake Roman Catholicism and to become the apostle of a purer life. His heart, he said, was "so subdued and reduced to docility that in comparison with his zeal for true piety he regarded all other studies with indifference, though not entirely abandoning them. Though himself a beginner, many flocked to him to learn the pure doctrine, and he began to seek some hiding-place and means of withdrawal from people."

[Sidenote: "The Institutes"]

His search for a hiding-place was quickened by the announced determination of the French king, Francis I, to put an end to religious dissent among his subjects. Calvin abruptly left France and found an asylum in the Swiss town of Basel, where he became acquainted at first hand with the type of reformed religion which Zwingli had propagated and where he proceeded to write a full account of the Protestant position as contrasted with the Catholic. This exposition,--The Institutes of the Christian Religion,--which was published in 1536, was dedicated to King Francis I and was intended to influence him in favor of Protestantism.

Although the book failed of its immediate purpose, it speedily won a deservedly great reputation. It was a statement of Calvin's views, borrowed in part from Zwingli, and in part from Luther and other reformers. It was orderly and concise, and it did for Protestant theology what the medieval writers had done for Catholic theology. It contained the germ of all that subsequently developed as Calvinism.

[Sidenote: Calvin and Luther]

It seemed for some time as if the Institutes might provide a common religious rule and guide for all Christians who rebelled against Rome. But Calvin, in mind and nature, was quite different from Luther. The latter was impetuous, excitable, but very human; the former was ascetic, calm, and inhumanly logical. Then, too, Luther was quite willing to leave everything in the church which was not prohibited by Scripture; Calvin insisted that nothing should remain in the church which was not expressly authorized by Scripture. The Institutes had a tremendous influence upon Protestantism but did not unite the followers of Calvin and Luther. Calvin's book seems all the more wonderful, when it is recalled that it was written when the author was but twenty-six years of age.

[Sidenote: Calvin at Geneva]

In 1536 Calvin went to Geneva, which was then in the throes of a revolution at once political and religious, for the townsfolk were freeing themselves from the feudal suzerainty of the duke of Savoy and banishing the Catholic Church, whose cause the duke championed. Calvin aided in the work and was rewarded by an appointment as chief pastor and preacher in the city. This position he continued to hold, except for a brief period when he was exiled, until his death in 1564. It proved to be a commanding position not only in ordering the affairs of the town, but also in giving form to an important branch of Protestant Christianity.

The government of Geneva under Calvin's regime was a curious theocracy of which Calvin himself was both religious leader and political "boss." The minister of the reformed faith became God's mouthpiece upon earth and inculcated an unbending puritanism in daily life. "No more festivals, no more jovial reunions, no more theaters or society; the rigid monotony of an austere rule weighed upon life. A poet was decapitated because of his verses; Calvin wished adultery to be punished by death like heresy, and he had Michael Servetus [Footnote: A celebrated Spanish reformer.] burned for not entertaining the same opinions as himself upon the mystery of the Trinity."

Under Calvin's theocratic despotism, Geneva became famous throughout Europe as the center of elaborate Protestant propaganda. Calvin, who set the example of stern simplicity and relentless activity, was sometimes styled the Protestant pope. He not only preached every day, wrote numerous theological treatises, and issued a French translation of the Bible, but he established important Protestant schools-- including the University of Geneva--which attracted students from distant lands, and he conducted a correspondence with his disciples and would-be reformers in all points of Europe. His letters alone would fill thirty folio volumes.

[Sidenote: Diffusion of Calvinism]

Such activities account for the almost bewildering diffusion of Calvinism. French, Dutch, Germans, Scotch, and English flocked to Geneva to hear Calvin or to attend his schools, and when they returned to their own countries they were likely to be so many glowing sparks ready to start mighty conflagrations.

Calvinism was known by various names in the different countries which it entered. On the continent of Europe it was called the Reformed Faith, and in France its followers were styled Huguenots; in Scotland it became Presbyterianism; and in England, Puritanism. Its essential characteristics, however, remained the same wherever it was carried.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in Switzerland]

We have already noticed how Switzerland, except for the five forest cantons, had been converted to Protestantism by the preaching of Zwingli. Calvin was Zwingli's real theological successor, and the majority of the Swiss, especially those in the urban cantons of Zürich and Bern as well as of Geneva, cheerfully accepted Calvinism.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in France: the Huguenots]

Calvinism also made converts in France. The doctrines and writings of Luther had there encountered small success. Many French reformers believed that greater good would eventually be achieved within the Catholic Church than without. There appeared to be fewer abuses among the French clergy than among the ecclesiastics of northern Europe, for they possessed less wealth and power. The French sovereign felt less prompted to lay his hand upon the dominions of the clergy, because a special agreement with the pope in 1516 bestowed upon the king the nomination of bishops and the disposition of benefices. For these reasons the bulk of the French people resisted Protestantism of every form and remained loyally Catholic.

What progress the new religion made in France was due to Calvin rather than to Luther. Calvin, as we have seen, was a Frenchman himself, and his teachings and logic appealed to a small but influential body of his fellow-countrymen. A considerable portion of the lower nobility, a few merchants and business men, and many magistrates conformed to Calvinism openly; the majority of great lawyers and men of learning adhered to it in public or in secret. Probably from a twentieth to a thirtieth of the total population embraced Calvinism. The movement was essentially confined to the middle-class or bourgeoisie, and almost from the outset it acquired a political as well as a religious significance. It represented among the lesser nobility an awakening of the aristocratic spirit and among the middle-class a reaction against the growing power of the king. The financial and moneyed interests of the country were largely attracted to French Calvinism. The Huguenots, as the French Calvinists were called, were particularly strong in the law courts and in the Estates-General or parliament, and these had been the main checks upon royal despotism.

[Sidenote: Edict of Nantes]

The Huguenots were involved in sanguinary civil and religious wars which raged in France throughout the greater part of the sixteenth century and which have already been treated in their appropriate political aspect. The outcome was the settlement accorded by King Henry IV in the famous Edict of Nantes (1598), which contained the following provisions: (1) Private worship and liberty of conscience were allowed to the Calvinists throughout France; (2) Public Protestant worship might be held in 200 enumerated towns and over 3000 castles; (3) A financial grant was made to Protestant schools, and the publication of Calvinist books was legalized; (4) Huguenots received full civil rights, with admission to all public offices; (5) Huguenots were granted for eight years the political control of two hundred towns, the garrisons of which were to be maintained by the crown; and (6) Huguenots were accorded certain judicial privileges and the right of holding religious and political assemblies. For nearly a hundred years France practiced a religious toleration which was almost unique among European nations, and it was Calvinists who benefited.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in the Netherlands]

The Netherlands were too near the Germanies not to be affected by the Lutheran revolt against the Catholic Church. And the northern or Dutch provinces became quite thoroughly saturated with Lutheranism and also with the doctrines of various radical sects that from time to time were expelled from the German states. The Emperor Charles V tried to stamp out heresy by harsh action of the Inquisition, but succeeded only in changing its name and nature. Lutheranism disappeared from the Netherlands; but in its place came Calvinism, [Footnote: Many Anabaptist refugees from Germany had already sought refuge in the Netherlands: they naturally found the teachings of Zwingli and Calvin more radical, and therefore more appropriate to themselves, than the teachings of Luther. This fact also serves to explain the acceptance of Calvinism in regions of southern Germany where Lutheranism, since the Peasants' Revolt, had failed to take root.] descending from Geneva through Alsace and thence down the Rhine, or entering from Great Britain by means of the close commercial relations existing between those countries. While the southern Netherlands eventually were recovered for Catholicism, the protracted political and economic conflict which the northern Netherlands waged against the Catholic king of Spain contributed to a final fixing of Calvinism as the national religion of patriotic Dutchmen. Calvinism in Holland was known as the Dutch Reformed religion.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in Southern Germany]

We have already noted that southern Germany had rejected aristocratic Lutheranism, partially at least because of Luther's bitter words to the peasants. Catholicism, however, was not destined to have complete sway in those regions, for democratic Calvinism permeated Württemberg, Baden, and the Rhenish provinces, and the Reformed doctrines gained numerous converts among the middle-class. The growth of Calvinism in Germany was seriously handicapped by the religious settlement of Augsburg in 1555 which officially tolerated only Catholicism and Lutheranism. It was not until after the close of the direful Thirty Years' War in the seventeenth century that German Calvinists received formal recognition.

[Sidenote: Scotland]

Scotland, like every other European country in the early part of the sixteenth century, had been a place of protest against moral and financial abuses in the Catholic Church, but the beginnings of ecclesiastical rebellion are to be traced rather to political causes. The kingdom had long been a prey to the bitter rivalry of great noble families, and the premature death of James V (1542), which left the throne to his ill-fated infant daughter, Mary Stuart, gave free rein to a feudal reaction against the crown. In general, the Catholic clergy sided with the royal cause, while the religious reformers egged on the nobles to champion Protestantism in order to deal an effective blow against the union of the altar and the throne. Thus Cardinal Beaton, head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, ordered numerous executions on the score of protecting religion and the authority of the queen-regent; on the other hand several noblemen, professing the new theology, assassinated the cardinal and hung his body on the battlements of the castle of St. Andrews (1546). Such was the general situation in Scotland when John Knox appeared upon the scene.

[Sidenote: John Knox]

Born of peasant parents about 1515, John Knox [Footnote: John Knox (c. 1515-1572).] had become a Catholic priest, albeit in sympathy with many of the revolutionary ideas which were entering Scotland from the Continent and from England. In 1546 he openly rejected the authority of the Church and proceeded to preach "the Gospel" and a stern puritanical morality. "Others snipped the branches," he said, "he struck at the root." But the Catholic court was able to banish Knox from Scotland. After romantic imprisonment in France, Knox spent a few years in England, preaching an extreme puritanism, holding a chaplaincy under Edward VI (1547-1553), and exerting his influence to insure an indelibly Protestant character to the Anglican Church. Then upon the accession to the English throne of the Catholic Mary Tudor, Knox betook himself to Geneva where he made the acquaintance of Calvin and found himself in essential agreement with the teachings of the French reformer.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in Scotland]

After a stay of some five years on the Continent, Knox returned finally to Scotland and became the organizer and director of the "Lords of the Congregation," a league of the chief Protestant noblemen for purposes of religious propaganda and political power. In 1560 he drew up the creed and discipline of the Presbyterian Church after the model of Calvin's church at Geneva; and in the same year with the support of the "Lords of the Congregation" and the troops of Queen Elizabeth of England, Knox effected a political and religious revolution in Scotland. The queen-regent was imprisoned and the subservient parliament abolished the papal supremacy and enacted the death penalty against any one who should even attend Catholic worship. John Knox had carried everything before him.

Mary Stuart, during her brief stay in Scotland (1561-1567), tried in vain to stem the tide. The jealous barons would brook no increase of royal authority. The austere Knox hounded the girl-queen in public sermons and fairly flayed her character. The queen's downfall and subsequent long imprisonment in England finally decided the ecclesiastical future of Scotland. Except in a few fastnesses in the northern highlands, where Catholicism survived among the clansmen, the whole country was committed to Calvinism.

[Sidenote: Calvinism in England]

Calvinism was not without influence in England. Introduced towards the close of the reign of Henry VIII, it gave rise to a number of small sects which troubled the king's Anglican Church almost as much as did the Roman Catholics. Under Edward VI (1547-1553), it considerably influenced the theology of the Anglican Church itself, but the moderate policies of Elizabeth (1558-1603) tended to fix an inseparable gulf between Anglicans and Calvinists. Thenceforth, Calvinism lived in England, in the forms of Presbyterianism, Independency, [Footnote: Among the "Independents" were the Baptists, a sect related not so immediately to Calvinism as to the radical Anabaptists of Germany. See above, pp. 134 f., 145, footnotes] and Puritanism, as the religion largely of the commercial middle class. It was treated with contempt, and even persecuted, by Anglicans, especially by the monarchs of the Stuart family. After a complete but temporary triumph under Cromwell, in the seventeenth century, it was at length legally tolerated in England after the settlement of 1689. It was from England that New England received the Calvinistic religion which dominated colonial forefathers of many present-day Americans.

ANGLICANISM

Anglicanism is the name frequently applied to that form of Protestantism which stamped the state church in England in the sixteenth century and which is now represented by the Episcopal Church in the United States as well as by the established Church of England. The Methodist churches are comparatively late off-shoots of Anglicanism.

The separation of England from the papacy was a more gradual and halting process than were the contemporary revolutions on the Continent; and the new Anglicanism was correspondingly more conservative than Lutheranism or Calvinism.

[Sidenote: English Catholicism in 1500] [Sidenote: Church of England]

At the opening of the sixteenth century, the word "Catholic" meant the same in England as in every other country of western or central Europe --belief in the seven sacraments, the sacrifice of the Mass, and the veneration of saints; acceptance of papal supremacy and support of monasticism and of other institutions and practices of the medieval Church. During several centuries it had been customary in legal documents to refer to the Catholic Church in England as the Ecclesia Anglicana, or Anglican Church, just as the popes in their letters repeatedly referred to the "Gallican Church," the "Spanish Church," the "Neapolitan Church," or the "Hungarian Church." But such phraseology did not imply a separation of any one national church from the common Catholic communion, and for nearly a thousand years--ever since there had been an Ecclesia Anglicana--the English had recognized the bishop of Rome as the center of Catholic unity. In the course of the sixteenth century, however, the great majority of Englishmen changed their conception of the Ecclesia Anglicana, so that to them it continued to exist as the Church of England, but henceforth on a strictly national basis, in communion neither with the pope nor with the Orthodox Church of the East nor with the Lutherans or Calvinists, abandoning several doctrines that had been universally held in earlier times and substituting in their place beliefs and customs which were distinctively Protestant. This new conception of the Anglican Church-- resulting from the revolution in the sixteenth century--is what we mean by Anglicanism as a form of Protestantism. It took shape in the eventful years between 1520 and 1570.

[Sidenote: Religious Opposition to the Roman Catholic Church in England]

In order to understand how this religious and ecclesiastical revolution was effected in England, we must appreciate the various elements distrustful of the Catholic Church in that country about the year 1525. In the first place, the Lutheran teachings were infiltrating into the country. As early as 1521 a small group at Cambridge had become interested in the new German theology, and thence the sect spread to Oxford, London, and other intellectual centers. It found its early converts chiefly among the lower clergy and the merchants of the large towns, but for several years it was not numerous.

In the second place, there was the same feeling in England as we have already noted throughout all Europe that the clergy needed reform in morals and in manners. This view was shared not only by the comparatively insignificant group of heretical Lutherans, but likewise by a large proportion of the leading men who accounted themselves orthodox members of the Catholic Church. The well-educated humanists were especially eloquent in preaching reform. The writings of Erasmus had great vogue in England. John Colet (1467?-1519), a famous dean of St. Paul's cathedral in London, was a keen reformer who disapproved of auricular confession and of the celibacy of the clergy. Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), one of the greatest minds of the century, thought the monks were lazy and indolent, and the whole body of churchmen in need of an intellectual betterment. But neither Colet nor More had any intention of breaking away from the Roman Church. To them, and to many like them, reform could be secured best within the traditional ecclesiastical body.

[Sidenote: Political Opposition to the Roman Catholic Church in England]

A third source of distrust of the Church was a purely political feeling against the papacy. As we have already seen, the English king and English parliament on several earlier occasions had sought to restrict the temporal and political jurisdiction of the pope in England, but each restriction had been imposed for political reasons and even then had represented the will of the monarch rather than that of the nation. In fact, the most striking limitations of the pope's political jurisdiction in the kingdom had been enacted during the early stages of the Hundred Years' War, when the papacy was under French influence, and had served, therefore, indirectly as political weapons against the French king. Before that war was over, the operation of the statutes had been relaxed, and for a century or more prior to 1525 little was heard of even a political feeling against the bishop of Rome.

Nevertheless an evolution in English government was in progress at that very time, which was bound sooner or later to create friction with the Holy See. On one hand, a sense of nationalism and of patriotism had been steadily growing in England, and it was at variance with the older cosmopolitan idea of Catholicism. On the other hand, a great increase of royal power had appeared in the fifteenth century, notably after the accession of the Tudor family in 1485. Henry VII (1485-1509) had subordinated to the crown both the nobility and the parliament, and the patriotic support of the middle class he had secured. And when his son, Henry VIII (1509-1547), came to the throne, the only serious obstacle which appeared to be left in the way of royal absolutism was the privileged independence of the Catholic Church.

[Sidenote: Early Loyalty of Henry VIII to the Roman Catholic Church]

Yet a number of years passed before Henry VIII laid violent hands upon the Church. In the meanwhile, he proved himself a devoted Roman Catholic. He scented the new Lutheran heresy and sought speedily to exterminate it. He even wrote in 1521 with his own royal pen a bitter arraignment of the new theology, and sent his book, which he called The Defence of the Seven Sacraments, with a delightful dedicatory epistle to the pope. For his prompt piety and filial orthodoxy, he received from the bishop of Rome the proud title of Fidei Defensor, or Defender of the Faith, a title which he jealously bore until his death, and which his successors, the sovereigns of Great Britain, with like humor have continued to bear ever since. He seemed not even to question the pope's political claims. He allied himself on several occasions with Leo X in the great game of European politics. His chief minister and adviser in England for many years was Thomas Wolsey, the most conspicuous ecclesiastic in his kingdom and a cardinal of the Roman Church.

[Sidenote: The Marriage Difficulty of Henry VIII]

Under these circumstances it is difficult to see how the Anglican Church would have immediately broken away from Catholic unity had it not been for the peculiar marital troubles of Henry VIII. The king had been married eighteen years to Catherine of Aragon, and had been presented by her with six children (of whom only one daughter, the Princess Mary, had survived), when one day he informed her that they had been living all those years in mortal sin and that their union was not true marriage. The queen could hardly be expected to agree with such a definition, and there ensued a legal suit between the royal pair.

To Henry VIII the matter was really quite simple. Henry was tired of Catherine and wanted to get rid of her; he believed the queen could bear him no more children and yet he ardently desired a male heir; rumor reported that the susceptible king had recently been smitten by the brilliant black eyes of a certain Anne Boleyn, a maid-in-waiting at the court. The purpose of Henry was obvious; so was the means, he thought. For it had occurred to him that Catherine was his elder brother's widow, and, therefore, had no right, by church law, to marry him. To be sure, a papal dispensation had been obtained from Pope Julius II authorizing the marriage, but why not now obtain a revocation of that dispensation from the reigning Pope Clement VII? Thus the marriage with Catherine could be declared null and void, and Henry would be a bachelor, thirty-six years of age, free to wed some princess, or haply Anne Boleyn.

[Sidenote: Difficult Position of the Pope]

There was no doubt that Clement VII would like to do a favor for his great English champion, but two difficulties at once presented themselves. It would be a most dangerous precedent for the pope to reverse the decision of one of his predecessors. Worse still, the Emperor Charles V, the nephew of Queen Catherine, took up cudgels in his aunt's behalf and threatened Clement with dire penalties if he nullified the marriage. The pope complained truthfully that he was between the anvil and the hammer. There was little for him to do except to temporize and to delay decision as long as possible.

The protracted delay was very irritating to the impulsive English king, who was now really in love with Anne Boleyn. Gradually Henry's former effusive loyalty to the Roman See gave way to a settled conviction of the tyranny of the papal power, and there rushed to his mind the recollection of efforts of earlier English rulers to restrict that power. A few salutary enactments against the Church might compel a favorable decision from the pope.

Henry VIII seriously opened his campaign against the Roman Church in 1531, when he frightened the English clergy into paying a fine of over half a million dollars for violating an obsolete statute that had forbidden reception of papal legates without royal sanction, and in the same year he forced the clergy to recognize himself as supreme head of the Church "as far as that is permitted by the law of Christ." His subservient Parliament then empowered him to stop the payment of annates and to appoint the bishops without recourse to the papacy. Without waiting longer for the papal decision, he had Cranmer, one of his own creatures, whom he had just named archbishop of Canterbury, declare his marriage with Catherine null and void and his union with Anne Boleyn canonical and legal. Pope Clement VII thereupon handed down his long-delayed decision favorable to Queen Catherine, and excommunicated Henry VIII for adultery.

[Sidenote: Separation of England from the Roman Catholic Church: the Act of Supremacy]

The formal breach between England and Rome occurred in 1534. Parliament passed a series of laws, one of which declared the king to be the "only supreme head in earth of the Church of England," and others cut off all communication with the pope and inflicted the penalty of treason upon any one who should deny the king's ecclesiastical supremacy.

One step in the transition of the Church of England had now been taken. For centuries its members had recognized the pope as their ecclesiastical head; henceforth they were to own the ecclesiastical headship of their king. From the former Catholic standpoint, this might be schism but it was not necessarily heresy. Yet Henry VIII encountered considerable opposition from the higher clergy, from the monks, and from many intellectual leaders, as well as from large numbers of the lower classes. A popular uprising--the Pilgrimage of Grace--was sternly suppressed, and such men as the brilliant Sir Thomas More and John Fisher, the aged and saintly bishop of Rochester, were beheaded because they retained their former belief in papal supremacy. Tudor despotism triumphed.

[Sidenote: The "Six Articles"]

The breach with Rome naturally encouraged the Lutherans and other heretics to think that England was on the point of becoming Protestant, but nothing was further from the king's mind. The assailant of Luther remained at least partially consistent. And the Six Articles (1539) reaffirmed the chief points in Catholic doctrine and practice and visited dissenters with horrible punishment. While separating England from the papacy, Henry was firmly resolved to maintain every other tenet of the Catholic faith as he had received it. His middle-of-the- road policy was enforced with much bloodshed. On one side, the Catholic who denied the royal supremacy was beheaded; on the other, the Protestant who denied transubstantiation was burned! It has been estimated that during the reign of Henry VIII the number of capital condemnations for politico-religious offenses ran into the thousands-- an inquisition that in terror and bloodshed is comparable to that of Spain.

[Sidenote: Suppression of the Monasteries]

It was likewise during the reign of Henry VIII that one of the most important of all earlier Christian institutions--monasticism--came to an end in England. There were certainly grave abuses and scandals in some of the monasteries which dotted the country, and a good deal of popular sentiment had been aroused against the institution. Then, too the monks had generally opposed the royal pretensions to religious control and remained loyal to the pope. But the deciding factor in the suppression of the monasteries was undoubtedly economic. Henry, always in need of funds on account of his extravagances, appropriated part of the confiscated property for the benefit of the crown, and the rest he astutely distributed as gigantic bribes to the upper classes of the laity. The nobles who accepted the ecclesiastical wealth were thereby committed to the new anti-papal religious settlement in England.

[Sidenote: Protestantizing the Church of England: Edward VI]

The Church of England, separated from the papacy under Henry VIII, became Protestant under Edward VI (1547-1553). The young king's guardian tolerated all manner of reforming propaganda, and Calvinists as well as Lutherans preached their doctrines freely. Official articles of religion, which were drawn up for the Anglican Church, showed unmistakably Protestant influence. The Latin service books of the Catholic Church were translated into English, under Cranmer's auspices, and the edition of the Book of Common Prayer, published in 1552, made clear that the Eucharist was no longer to be regarded as a propitiatory sacrifice: the names "Holy Communion" and "Lord's Supper" were substituted for "Mass," while the word "altar" was replaced by "table." The old places of Catholic worship were changed to suit a new order: altars and images were taken down, the former service books destroyed, and stained-glass windows broken. Several peasant uprisings signified that the nation was not completely united upon a policy of religious change, but the reformers had their way, and Protestantism advanced.

[Sidenote: Temporary Roman Catholic Revival under Mary Tudor]

A temporary setback to the progress of the new Anglicanism was afforded by the reign of Mary Tudor (1553-1558), the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, and a devout Roman Catholic. She reinstated the bishops who had refused to take the oath of royal supremacy and punished those who had taken it. She prevailed upon Parliament to repeal the ecclesiastical legislation of both her father's and her brother's reigns and to reconcile England once more with the bishop of Rome. A papal legate, in the person of Cardinal Reginald Pole, sailed up the Thames with his cross gleaming from the prow of his barge, and in full Parliament administered the absolution which freed the kingdom from the guilt under Mary incurred by its schism and heresy. As an additional support to her policy of restoring the Catholic Church in England, Queen Mary married her cousin, Philip II of Spain, the great champion of Catholicism upon the Continent.

But events proved that despite outward appearances even the reign of Mary registered an advance of Protestantism. The new doctrines were zealously propagated by an ever-growing number of itinerant exhorters. The Spanish alliance was disastrous to English fortunes abroad and distasteful to all patriotic Englishmen at home. And finally, the violent means which the queen took to stamp out heresy gave her the unenviable surname of "Bloody" and reacted in the end in behalf of the views for which the victims sacrificed their lives. During her reign nearly three hundred reformers perished, many of them, including Archbishop Cranmer, by fire. The work of the queen was in vain. No heir was born to Philip and Mary, and the crown, therefore, passed to Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, a Protestant not so much from conviction as from circumstance.

[Sidenote: Definite Fashioning of Anglicanism: the Reign of Elizabeth]

It was in the reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603) that the Church of England assumed definitely the doctrines and practices which we now connect with the word "Anglicanism." By act of Parliament, the English Church was again separated from the papacy, and placed under royal authority, Elizabeth assuming the title of "supreme governor." The worship of the state church was to be in conformity with a slightly altered version of Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer. A uniform doctrine was likewise imposed by Parliament in the form of the Thirty-nine Articles, which set a distinctively Protestant mark upon the Anglican Church in its appeal to the Scriptures as the sole rule of faith, its insistence on justification by faith alone, its repudiation of the sacrifice of the Mass, and its definition of the Church. All the bishops who had been appointed under Mary, with one exception, refused to accept the changes, and were therefore deposed and imprisoned, but new bishops, Elizabeth's own appointees, were consecrated and the "succession of bishops" thereby maintained. Outwardly, the Church of England appeared to retain a corporate continuity throughout the sixteenth century; inwardly, a great revolution had changed it from Catholic to Protestant.

Harsh laws sought to oblige all Englishmen to conform to Elizabeth's religious settlement. Liberty of public worship was denied to any dissenter from Anglicanism. To be a "papist" or "hear Mass"--which were construed as the same thing--was punishable by death as high treason. A special ecclesiastical court--the Court of High Commission--was established under royal authority to search out heresy and to enforce uniformity; it served throughout Elizabeth's reign as a kind of Protestant Inquisition.

[Sidenote: English Dissent from Anglicanism]

While the large majority of the English nation gradually conformed to the official Anglican Church, a considerable number refused their allegiance. On one hand were the Roman Catholics, who still maintained the doctrine of papal supremacy and were usually derisively styled papists, and on the other hand were various Calvinistic sects, such as Presbyterians or Independents or Quakers, who went by the name of "Dissenters" or "Non-conformists." In the course of time, the number of Roman Catholics tended to diminish, largely because, for political reasons which have been indicated in the preceding chapter, Protestantism in England became almost synonymous with English patriotism. But despite drastic laws and dreadful persecutions, Roman Catholicism survived in England among a conspicuous group of people. On the other hand, the Calvinists tended somewhat to increase their numbers so that in the seventeenth century they were able to precipitate a great political and ecclesiastical conflict with Anglicanism.

THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION

We have now traced the origins of the Protestant Revolt against the Catholic Church, and have seen how, between 1520 and 1570, three major varieties of new theology--Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism-- appeared on the scene and divided among themselves the nations of northern Europe. The story of how, during that critical half-century, the other civilized nations retained their loyalty to the Catholic Church virtually as it had existed throughout the middle ages, remains to be told. The preservation of the papal monarchy and Catholic doctrine in southern Europe was due alike to religious and to political circumstances.

It must not be supposed that pious critics of ecclesiastical abuses were confined to countries which subsequently became Protestant. There were many sincere Catholics in Italy, Austria, France, and Spain who complained of the scandals and worldliness that afflicted the Church at the opening of the sixteenth century: they demanded sweeping reforms in discipline and a return of the clergy to a simple apostolic life. They believed, however, that whatever change was desirable could best be achieved by means of a reformation within the Catholic Church--that is, without disturbing the unity of its organization or denying the validity of its dogmas--while the critics of northern Europe, as we have seen, preferred to put their reforms into practice by means of a revolution--an out-and-out break with century-old traditions of Catholic Christianity. Even in northern Europe some of the foremost scholars of that period desired an intellectual reformation within Catholicism rather than a dogmatic rebellion against it: with Luther's defiance of papal authority, the great Erasmus had small sympathy, and Sir Thomas More, the eminent English humanist, sacrificed his life for his belief in the divine sanction of the papal power.

Thus, while the religious energy of northern Europe went into Protestantism of various kinds, that of southern Europe fashioned a reformation of the Catholic system. And this Catholic reformation, on its religious side, was brought to a successful issue by means of the improved conditions in the papal court, the labors of a great church council, and the activity of new monastic orders. A few words must be said about each one of these religious elements in the Catholic reformation.

[Sidenote: Reforming Popes]

Mention has been made of the corruption that prevailed in papal affairs in the fifteenth century, and of the Italian and family interests which obscured to the Medici pope, Leo X (1513-1521), the importance of the Lutheran movement in Germany. And Leo's nephew, who became Clement VII (1523-1534), continued to act too much as an Italian prince and too little as the moral and religious leader of Catholicism in the contest which under him was joined with Zwinglians and Anglicans as well as with Lutherans. But under Paul III (1534-1549), a new policy was inaugurated, by which men were appointed to high church offices for their virtue and learning rather than for family relationship or financial gain. This policy was maintained by a series of upright and far-sighted popes during the second half of the sixteenth century, so that by the year 1600 a remarkable reformation had been gradually wrought in the papacy, among the cardinals, down through the prelates, even to the parish priests and monks.

[Sidenote: The Council of Trent]

The reforming zeal of individual popes was stimulated and reinforced by the work of the Council of Trent (1545-1563). The idea of effecting a "reformation in head and members" by means of a general council of the Catholic Church had been invoked several times during the century that preceded the Protestant Revolt, but, before Luther, little had been accomplished in that way.

With the widening of the breach between Protestantism and the medieval Church, what had formerly been desirable now became imperative. It seemed to pious Catholics that every effort should be made to reconcile differences and to restore the unity of the Church. The errors of the manifold new theologies which now appeared might be refuted by a clear statement of Catholic doctrine, and a reformation of discipline and morals would deprive the innovators of one of their most telling weapons against the Church.

It was no easy task, in that troublous time, to hold an ecumenical council. There was mutual distrust between Catholics and Protestants. There was uncertainty as to the relative powers and prerogatives of council and pope. There were bitter national rivalries, especially between Italians and Germans. There was actual warfare between the two chief Catholic families--the Habsburgs of Germany and Spain and the royal house of France.

Yet despite these difficulties, which long postponed its convocation and repeatedly interrupted its labors, the Council of Trent [Footnote: Trent was selected largely by reason of its geographical location, being situated on the boundary between the German-speaking and Italian- speaking peoples.] consummated a great reform in the Church and contributed materially to the preservation of the Catholic faith. The Protestants, whom the pope invited to participate, absented themselves; yet such was the number and renown of the Catholic bishops who responded to the summons that the Council of Trent easily ranked with the eighteen œcumenical councils which had preceded it. [Footnote: Its decrees were signed at its close (1563) by 4 cardinal legates, 2 cardinals, 3 patriarchs, 25 archbishops, 167 bishops, 7 abbots, 7 generals of orders, and 19 proxies for 33 absent prelates.] The work of the council was twofold--dogmatic and reformatory.

Dogmatically, the fathers at Trent offered no compromise to the Protestants. They confirmed with inexorable frankness the main points in Catholic theology which had been worked out in the thirteenth century by Thomas Aquinas and which before the appearance of Protestantism had been received everywhere in central and western Europe. They declared that the tradition of the Church as well as the Bible was to be taken as the basis of the Christian religion, and that the interpretation of the Holy Scripture belonged only to the Church. The Protestant teachings about grace and justification by faith were condemned, and the seven sacraments were pronounced indispensable. The miraculous and sacrificial character of the Lord's Supper (Mass) was reaffirmed. Belief in the invocation of saints, in the veneration of images and of relics, in purgatory and indulgences was explicitly stated, but precautions were taken to clear some of the doctrines of the pernicious practices which at times had been connected with them. The spiritual authority of the Roman See was confirmed over all Catholicism: the pope was recognized as supreme interpreter of the canons and incontestable chief of bishops.

[Sidenote: Reformatory Canons of the Council of Trent ]

A volume of disciplinary statutes constituted the second achievement of the Tridentine Council. The sale of church offices was condemned. Bishops and other prelates were to reside in their respective dioceses, abandon worldly pursuits, and give themselves entirely to spiritual labors. Seminaries were to be established for the proper education and training of priests.

While Latin was retained as the official and liturgical language, frequent sermons were to be preached in the vernacular. Indulgences were not to be issued for money, and no charge should be made for conferring the sacraments.

[Sidenote: Index and inquisition ]

The seed sown by the council bore abundant fruit during several succeeding pontificates. The central government was completely reorganized. A definite catechism was prepared at Rome and every layman instructed in the tenets and obligations of his religion. Revisions were made in the service books of the Church, and a new standard edition of the Latin Bible, the Vulgate, was issued. A list, called the Index, was prepared of dangerous and heretical books, which good Catholics were prohibited from reading. By these methods, discipline was in fact confirmed, morals purified, and the scandal of the immense riches and the worldly life of the clergy restrained. From an unusually strict law of faith and conduct, lapses were to be punishable by the ancient ecclesiastical court of the Inquisition, which now zealously redoubled its activity, especially in Italy and in Spain.

A very important factor in the Catholic revival--not only in preserving all southern Europe to the Church but also in preventing a complete triumph of Protestantism in the North--was the formation of several new religious orders, which sought to purify the life of the people and to bulwark the position of the Church. The most celebrated of these orders, both for its labors in the sixteenth century and for its subsequent history, is the Society of Jesus, whose members are known commonly as Jesuits. The society was founded by Ignatius Loyola [Footnote: Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556).] in 1534 and its constitution was formally approved by the pope six years later.

[Sidenote: Ignatius Loyola]

In his earlier years, Ignatius followed the profession of arms, and as a patriotic Spaniard fought valiantly in the armies of Emperor Charles V against the French. But while he was in a hospital, suffering from a wound, he chanced to read a Life of Christ and biographies of several saints, which, he tells us, worked a great change within him. From being a soldier of an earthly king, he would now become a knight of Christ and of the Church. Instead of fighting for the glory of Spain and of himself, he would henceforth strive for the greater glory of God. Thus in the very year in which the German monk, Martin Luther, became the leading and avowed adversary of the Catholic Church, this Spanish soldier was starting on that remarkable career which was to make him Catholicism's chief champion.

After a few years' trial of his new life and several rather footless efforts to serve the Church, Ignatius determined, at the age of thirty- three, to perfect his scanty education. It was while he was studying Latin, philosophy, and theology at the University of Paris that he made the acquaintance of the group of scholarly and saintly men who became the first members of the Society of Jesus. Intended at first primarily for missionary labors among the Mohammedans, the order was speedily turned to other and greater ends.

[Sidenote: The Jesuits]

The organization of the Jesuits showed the military instincts of their founder. To the three usual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, was added a fourth vow of special allegiance to the pope. The members were to be carefully trained during a long novitiate and were to be under the personal direction of a general, resident in Rome. Authority and obedience were stressed by the society. Then, too, St. Ignatius Loyola understood that the Church was now confronted with conditions of war rather than of peace: accordingly he directed that his brothers should not content themselves with prayer and works of peace, with charity and local benevolence, but should adapt themselves to new circumstances and should strive in a multiplicity of ways to restore all things in the Catholic Church.

Thus it happened that the Jesuits, from the very year of their establishment, rushed to the front in the religious conflict of the sixteenth century. In the first place, they sought to enlighten and educate the young. As schoolmasters they had no equals in Europe for many years. No less a scholar and scientist than Lord Francis Bacon said of the Jesuit teaching that "nothing better has been put in practice." Again, by their wide learning and culture, no less than by the unimpeachable purity of their lives, they won back a considerable respect for the Catholic clergy. As preachers, too, they earned a high esteem by the clearness and simplicity of their sermons and instruction.

It was in the mission field, however, that the Jesuits achieved the most considerable results. They were mainly responsible for the recovery of Poland after that country had almost become Lutheran. They similarly conserved the Catholic faith in Bavaria and in the southern Netherlands. They insured a respectable Catholic party in Bohemia and in Hungary. They aided considerably in maintaining Catholicism in Ireland. At the hourly risk of their lives, they ministered to their fellow-Catholics in England under Elizabeth and the Stuarts. And what the Catholic Church lost in numbers through the defection of the greater part of northern Europe was compensated for by Jesuit missions among the teeming millions in India and China, among the Huron and Iroquois tribes of North America, and among the aborigines of Brazil and Paraguay. No means of influence, no source of power, was neglected that would win men to religion and to the authority of the bishop of Rome. Politics and agriculture were utilized as well as literature and science. The Jesuits were confessors of kings in Europe and apostles of the faith in Asia and America.

[Sidenote: Political and Economic Factors in the Catholic Reformation]

It has been pointed out already that the rapid diffusion of Protestantism was due to economic and political causes as well as to those narrowly religious. It may be said with equal truth that political and economic causes co-operated with the religious developments that we have just noted in maintaining the supremacy of the Catholic Church in at least half the countries over which she had exercised her sway in 1500. For one thing, it is doubtful whether financial abuses had flourished as long or as vigorously in southern as in northern Europe. For another, the political conditions in the states of southern Europe help to explain the interesting situation.

[Sidebar: Italy]

In Italy was the pope's residence and See. He had bestowed many favors on important Italian families. He had often exploited foreign countries in behalf of Italian patronage. He had taken advantage of the political disunity of the peninsula to divide his local enemies and thereby to assure the victory of his own cause. Two popes of the sixteenth century belonged to the powerful Florentine family of the Medici--Florence remained loyal. The hearty support of the Emperor Charles V preserved the orthodoxy of Naples, and that of Philip II stamped out heresy in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

[Sidenote: France]

In France, the concordat of 1516 between pope and king had peacefully secured for the French monarch appointment of bishops and control of benefices within his country,--powers which the German princes and the English sovereigns secured by revolutionary change. Moreover, French Protestantism, by its political activities in behalf of effective checks upon the royal power, drove the king into Catholic arms: the cause of absolutism in France became the cause of Catholicism, and the latter was bound up with French patriotism to quite the same extent as English patriotism became linked with the fortunes of Anglicanism.

[Sidenote: Spain and Portugal]

In Spain and Portugal, the monarchs obtained concessions from the pope like those accorded the French sovereigns. They gained control of the Catholic Church within their countries and found it a most valuable ally in forwarding their absolutist tendencies. Moreover, the centuries-long struggle with Mohammedanism had endeared Catholic Christianity alike to Spaniards and to Portuguese and rendered it an integral part of their national life. Spain and Portugal now remained fiercely Catholic.

[Sidenote: Austria]

Somewhat similar was the case of Austria. Terrifying fear of the advancing Turk, joined with the political exigencies of the Habsburg rulers, threw that duchy with most of its dependencies into the hands of the pope. If the bishop of Rome, by favoring the Habsburgs, had lost England, he had at least saved Austria.

[Sidenote: Poland and Ireland]

Ireland and Poland--those two extreme outposts of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe--found their religion to be the most effectual safeguard of their nationality, the most valuable weapon against aggression or assimilation by powerful neighbors.

SUMMARY OF THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

By the year 1570 the profound religious and ecclesiastical changes which we have been sketching had been made. For seventy-five years more a series of wars was to be waged in which the religious element was distinctly to enter. In fact these wars have often been called the Religious Wars--the ones connected with the career of Philip II of Spain as well as the subsequent dismal civil war in the Germanies--but in each one the political and economic factors predominated. Nor did the series of wars materially affect the strength or extent of the religions implicated. It was prior to 1570 that the Protestant Revolt had been effected and the Catholic Reformation achieved.

[Sidenote: Geographical Extent of the Revolt]

In the year 1500, the Roman Catholic Church embraced central and western Europe; in the year 1600 nearly half of its former subjects-- those throughout northern Europe--no longer recognized its authority or practiced its beliefs. There were left to the Roman Catholic Church at the close of the sixteenth century the Italian states, Spain, Portugal, most of France, the southern Netherlands, the forest cantons of Switzerland, the southern Germanies, Austria, Poland, Ireland, large followings in Bohemia and Hungary, and a straggling unimportant following in other countries.

Those who rejected the Roman Catholic Church in central and western Europe were collectively called Protestants, but they were divided into three major groups. Lutheranism was now the religion of the northern Germanies and the Scandinavian states of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Calvinism, under a bewildering variety of names, was the recognized faith of the majority of the cantons of Switzerland, of the northern Netherlands, and Scotland, and of important followings in Germany, Hungary, France, and England. Anglicanism was the established religion of England.

[Sidenote: Doctrines Held in Common by Catholics and Protestants]

The Protestants retained a large part of Catholic theology, so that all portions of western Christianity continued to have much in common. They still believed in the Trinity, in the divinity of Jesus Christ, in the sacredness of the Jewish scriptures and of the New Testament, the fall of man and his redemption through the sacrifice of the Cross, and in a future life of rewards and punishments. The Christian moralities and virtues continued to be inculcated by Protestants as well as by Catholics.

[Sidenote: Doctrines Held by all Protestants Apart from Catholics]

On the other hand, the Protestants held in common certain doctrines which separated all of them from Roman Catholicism. These were the distinguishing marks of Protestantism: (1) denial of the claims of the bishop of Rome and consequent rejection of the papal government and jurisdiction; (2) rejection of such doctrines as were supposed to have developed during the middle ages,--for example, purgatory, indulgences, invocation of saints, and veneration of relics,--together with important modifications in the sacramental system; (3) insistence upon the right of the individual to interpret the Bible, and recognition of the individual's ability to save himself without the interposition of ecclesiastics--hence to the Protestant, authority resided in individual interpretation of the Bible, while to the Catholic, it rested in a living institution or Church.

[Sidenote: Divisions among Protestants]

Now the Protestant idea of authority made it possible and essentially inevitable that its supporters should not agree on many things among themselves. There would be almost as many ways of interpreting the Scriptures as there were interested individuals. It is not surprising, therefore, that in the last Almanac some one hundred and sixty-four varieties or denominations of Protestants are listed in the United States alone. These divisions, however, are not so complex as at first might appear, because nearly all of them have come directly from the three main forms of Protestantism which appeared in the sixteenth century. Just how Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Anglicanism differed from each other may be gathered from a short summary.

(1) The Calvinists taught justification by election--that God determines, or predestines, who is to be saved and who is to be lost. The Lutherans were inclined to reject such doctrine, and to assure salvation to the mere believer. The Anglicans appeared to accept the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith, although the Thirty- nine Articles might be likewise interpreted in harmony with the Calvinistic position.

(2) The Calvinists recognized only two sacraments--baptism and the Lord's Supper. Lutherans and Anglicans retained, in addition to the two sacraments, the rite of confirmation, and Anglicans also the rite of ordination. The official statement of Anglicanism that there are "two major sacraments" has made it possible for some Anglicans--the so- called High Church party--to hold the Catholic doctrine of seven sacraments.

(3) Various substitutes were made for the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, the idea that in the Lord's Supper the bread and wine by the word of the priest are actually changed into the Body and Blood of Christ. The Lutherans maintained what they called consubstantiation, that Christ was with and in the bread and wine, as fire is in a hot iron, to borrow the metaphor of Luther himself. The Calvinists, on the other hand, saw in the Eucharist, not the efficacious sacrifice of Christ, but a simple commemoration of the Last Supper; to them the bread and wine were mere symbols of the Body and Blood. As to the Anglicans, their position was ambiguous, for their official confession of faith declared at once that the Supper is the communion of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ but that the communicant receives Jesus Christ only spiritually: the present-day "Low Church" Anglicans incline to a Calvinistic interpretation, those of the "High Church" to the Catholic explanation.

(4) There were pronounced differences in ecclesiastical government. All the Protestants considerably modified the Catholic system of a divinely appointed clergy of bishops, priests, and deacons, under the supreme spiritual jurisdiction of the pope. The Anglicans rejected the papacy, although they retained the orders of bishop, priest, and deacon, and insisted that their hierarchy was the direct continuation of the medieval Church in England, and therefore that their organization was on the same footing as the Orthodox Church of eastern Europe. The Lutherans rejected the divinely ordained character of episcopacy, but retained bishops as convenient administrative officers. The Calvinists did away with bishops altogether and kept only one order of clergymen-- the presbyters. Such Calvinistic churches as were governed by assemblies or synods of presbyters were called Presbyterian; those which subordinated the "minister" to the control of the people in each separate congregation were styled Independent, or Separatist, or Congregational. [Footnote: This latter type of church government was maintained also by the quasi-Calvinistic denomination of the Baptists.]

(5) In the ceremonies of public worship the Protestant churches differed. Anglicanism kept a good deal of the Catholic ritual although in the form of translation from Latin to English, together with several Catholic ceremonies, in some places even employing candles and incense. The Calvinists, on the other hand, worshiped with extreme simplicity: reading of the Bible, singing of hymns, extemporaneous prayer, and preaching constituted the usual service in church buildings that were without superfluous ornaments. Between Anglican formalism and Calvinistic austerity, the Lutherans presented a compromise: they devised no uniform liturgy, but showed some inclination to utilize forms and ceremonies.

[Sidenote: Significance of the Protestant Revolt]

Of the true significance of the great religious and ecclesiastical changes of the sixteenth century many estimates in the past have been made, varying with the point of view, or bias, of each author. Several results, however, now stand out clearly and are accepted generally by all scholars, regardless of religious affiliations. These results may be expressed as follows:

In the first place, the Catholic Church of the middle ages was disrupted and the medieval ideal of a universal theocracy under the bishop of Rome was rudely shocked.

In the second place, the Christian religion was largely nationalized. Protestantism was the religious aspect of nationalism; it naturally came into being as a protest against the cosmopolitan character of Catholicism; it received its support from nations; and it assumed everywhere a national form. The German states, the Scandinavian countries, Scotland, England, each had its established state religion. What remained to the Catholic Church, as we have seen, was essentially for national reasons and henceforth rested mainly on a national basis.

Thirdly, the whole movement tended to narrow the Catholic Church dogmatically. The exigencies of answering the Protestants called forth explicit definitions of belief. The Catholic Church was henceforth on the defensive, and among her members fewer differences of opinion were tolerated than formerly.

Fourthly, a great impetus to individual morality, as well as to theological study, was afforded by the reformation. Not only were many men's minds turned temporarily from other intellectual interests to religious controversy, but the individual faithful Catholic or Protestant was encouraged to vie with his neighbor in actually proving that his particular religion inculcated a higher moral standard than any other. It rendered the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries more earnest and serious and also more bigoted than the fifteenth.

Finally, the Protestant Revolution led immediately to important political and social changes. The power of secular rulers was immeasurably increased. By confiscation of church lands and control of the clergy, the Tudor sovereigns in England, the kings in Scandinavia, and the German princes were personally enriched and freed from fear of being hampered in absolutist tendencies by an independent ecclesiastical organization. Even in Catholic countries, the monarchs were able to wring such concessions from the pope as resulted in shackling the Church to the crown.

The wealth of the nobles was swelled, especially in Protestant countries, by seizure of the property of the Church either directly or by means of bribes tendered for aristocratic support of the royal confiscations. But despite such an access of wealth, the monarchs took pains to see that the nobility acquired no new political influence.

In order to prevent the nobles from recovering political power, the absolutist monarchs enlisted the services of the faithful middle class, which speedily attained an enviable position in the principal European states. It is safe to say that the Protestant Revolution was one of many elements assisting in the development of this middle class.

For the peasantry--still the bulk of European population--the religious and ecclesiastical changes seem to have been peculiarly unfortunate. What they gained through a diminution of ecclesiastical dues and taxes was more than lost through the growth of royal despotism and the exactions of hard-hearted lay proprietors. The peasants had changed the names of their oppressors and found themselves in a worse condition than before. There is little doubt that, at least so far as the Germanies and the Scandinavian countries are concerned, the lot of the peasants was less favorable immediately after, than immediately before, the rise of Protestantism.

ADDITIONAL READING

GENERAL. Good brief accounts of the whole religious revolution of the sixteenth century: Frederic Seebohm, The Era of the Protestant Revolution, new ed. (1904); J. H. Robinson, Reformation, in "Encyclopædia Britannica," 11th ed. (1911); A. H. Johnson, Europe in the Sixteenth Century (1897), ch. iii-v and pp. 272 ff.; E. M. Hulme, Renaissance and Reformation, 2d ed. (1915), ch. x-xviii, xxi-xxiii; Victor Duruy, History of Modern Times, trans. and rev. by E. A. Grosvenor (1894), ch. xiii, xiv. More detailed accounts are given in the Cambridge Modern History, Vol. II (1904), and in the Histoire generate, Vol. IV, ch. x-xvii, and Vol. V, ch. i. All the standard general histories of the Christian Church contain accounts of the rise of Protestantism, naturally varying among themselves according to the religious convictions of their authors. Among the best Protestant histories may be cited: T. M. Lindsay, A History of the Reformation, 2 vols. (1906-1910); Wilhelm Moeller, History of the Christian Church, trans. and condensed by J. H. Freese, 3 vols. (1893-1900); Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vols. VI and VII; A. H. Newman, A Manual of Church History, Vol. II (1903), Period V; G. P. Fisher, History of the Christian Church (1887), Period VIII, ch. i- xii. From the Catholic standpoint the best ecclesiastical histories are: John Alzog, Manual of Universal Church History, trans. from 9th German edition (1903), Vol. II and Vol. Ill, Epoch I; and the histories in German by Joseph (Cardinal) Hergen-rother [ed. by J. P. Kirsch, 2 vols. (1902-1904)], by Alois Knopfler (5th ed., 1910) [based on the famous Conciliengeschichte of K. J. (Bishop) von Hefele], and by F. X. von Funk (5th ed., 1911); see, also, Alfred Baudrillart, The Catholic Church, the Renaissance and Protestantism, Eng. trans. by Mrs. Philip Gibbs (1908). Many pertinent articles are to be found in the scholarly Catholic Encyclopedia, 15 vols. (1907-1912), in the famous Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, 3d ed., 24 vols. (1896-1913), and in the (Non-Catholic) Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. by James Hastings and now (1916) in course of publication. For the popes of the period, see Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages, the monumental work of a distinguished Catholic historian, the twelfth volume of which (coming down to 1549) was published in English translation in 1912; and the older but still useful (Protestant) History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome by Mandell Creighton, new ed. in 6 vols. (1899-1901), and History of the Popes by Leopold von Ranke, 3 vols. in the Bonn Library (1885). Heinrich Denziger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, Definitionum, et Declarationium de rebus fidei el morum, 11nth ed. (1911), is a convenient collection of official pronouncements in Latin on the Catholic Faith. Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, 3 vols. (1878), contains the chief Greek, Latin, and Protestant creeds in the original and usually also in English translation. Also useful is B. J. Kidd (editor), Documents Illustrative of the Continental Reformation (1911). For additional details of the relation of the Reformation to sixteenth-century politics, consult the bibliography appended to Chapter III, above.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY. In the Cambridge Modern History, Vol. I (1902), a severe indictment of the Church is presented (ch. xix) by H. C. Lea, and a defense is offered (ch. xviii) by William Barry. The former opinions are developed startlingly by H. C. Lea in Vol. I, ch. i, of his History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages. An old-fashioned, though still interesting, Protestant view is that of William Roscoe, Life and Pontificate of Leo X, 4 vols. (first pub. 1805-1806, many subsequent editions). For an excellent description of the organization of the Catholic Church, see André Mater, L'église catholique, sa constitution, son administration (1906). The best edition of the canon law is that of Friedberg, 2 vols. (1881). On the social work of the Church: E. L. Cutts, Parish Priests and their People in the Middle Ages in England (1898), and G. A. Prévost, L'église et les campagnes au moyen âge (1892). The most recent and comprehensive study of the Catholic Church on the eve of the Protestant Revolt is that of Pierre Imbart de la Tour, Les origines de la Réforme, Vol. I, La France moderne (1905), and Vol. II, L'église catholique, la crise et la renaissance (1909). For the Orthodox Church of the East see Louis Duchesne, The Churches Separated from Rome, trans. by A. H. Mathew (1908).

MOHAMMEDANISM. Sir William Muir, Life of Mohammed, new and rev. ed. by T. H. Weir (1912); Ameer Ali, Life and Teachings of Mohammed (1891), and, by the same author, warmly sympathetic, Islam (1914); D. S. Margoliouth, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam (1905), in the "Heroes of the Nations" Series, and, by the same author, The Early Development of Mohammedanism (1914); Arthur Gilman, Story of the Saracens (1902), in the "Story of the Nations" Series. Edward Gibbon has two famous chapters (1, li) on Mohammed and the Arabian conquests in his masterpiece, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The Koran, the sacred book of Mohammedans, has been translated into English by E. H. Palmer, 2 vols. (1880): entertaining extracts are given in Stanley Lane-Poole, Speeches and Table Talk of the Prophet Mohammad.

LUTHER AND LUTHERANISM. Of innumerable biographies of Luther the best from sympathetic Protestant pens are: Julius Köstlin, Life of Luther, trans. and abridged from the German (1900); T. M. Lindsay, Luther and the German Reformation (1900); A. C. McGiffert, Martin Luther, the Man and his Work (1911); Preserved Smith, The Life and Letters of Martin Luther (1911); Charles Beard, Martin Luther and the Reformation in Germany until the Close of the Diet of Worms (1889). A remarkable arraignment of Luther is the work of the eminent Catholic historian, F. H. S. Denifle, Luther und Luthertum in der ersten Entwickelung, 3 vols. (1904-1909), trans. into French by J. Pasquier (1911-1912). The most available Catholic study of Luther's personality and career is the scholarly work of Hartmann Grisar, Luther, 3 vols. (1911-1913), trans. from German into English by E. M. Lamond, 4 vols. (1913-1915). First Principles of the Reformation, ed. by Henry Wace and C. A. Buchheim (1885), contains an English translation of Luther's "Theses," and of his three pamphlets of 1520. The best edition of Luther's complete works is the Weimar edition; English translations of portions of his Table Talk, by William Hazlitt, have appeared in the Bonn Library; and Luther's Correspondence and Other Contemporary Letters is now (1916) in course of translation and publication by Preserved Smith. J. W. Richard, Philip Melanchthon (1898) is a brief biography of one of the most famous friends and associates of Luther. For the Protestant Revolt in Germany: E. F. Henderson, A Short History of Germany (1902), Vol. I, ch. x-xvi, a brief sketch of the political and social background; Johannes Janssen, History of the German People, a monumental treatise on German social history just before and during the revolt, scholarly and very favorable to the Catholic Church, trans. into English by M. A. Mitchell and A. M. Christie, 16 vols. (1896-1910); Gottlob Egelhaaf, Deutsche Geschichte im sechzehnten Jahrhundert bis zum Augsburger Religionsfrieden, 2 vols. (1889-1892), a Protestant rejoinder to some of the Catholic Janssen's deductions; Karl Lamprecht, Deutsche Geschichte, Vol. V, Part I (1896), suggestive philosophizing; Leopold von Ranke, History of the Reformation in Germany, Eng. trans., 3 vols., a careful study, coming down in the original German to 1555, but stopping short in the English form with the year 1534; Friedrich von Bezold, Geschichte der deutschen Reformation, 2 vols. (1886-1890), in the bulky Oncken Series, voluminous and moderately Protestant in tone; J. J. I. von Döllinger, Die Reformation, ihre innere Entwicklung und ihre Wirkungen, 3 vols. (1853-1854), pointing out the opposition of many educated people of the sixteenth century to Luther; A. E. Berger, Die Kulturaufgaben der Reformation, 2d ed. (1908), a study of the cultural aspects of the Lutheran movement, Protestant in tendency and opposed in certain instances to the generalizations of Janssen and Döllinger; J. S. Schapiro, Social Reform and the Reformation (1909), a brief but very suggestive treatment of some of the economic factors of the German Reformation; H. C. Vedder, The Reformation in Germany (1914), likewise stressing economic factors, and sympathetic toward the Anabaptists. For additional facts concerning the establishment of Lutheranism in Scandinavia, see R. N. Bain, Scandinavia, a Political History of Denmark, Norway and Sweden from 1513 to 1900 (1905), and John Wordsworth (Bishop of Salisbury), The National Church of Sweden (1911). Zwingli, Calvin, and Calvinism. The best biography of Zwingli in English is that of S. M. Jackson (1901), who likewise has edited the Selected Works of Zwingli; a more exhaustive biography in German is Rudolf Stahelin, Huldreich Zwingli: sein Leben und Wirken, 2 vols. (1895 1897). Biographies of Calvin: H. Y. Reyburn, John Calvin: his Life, Letters, and Work (1914); Williston Walker, John Calvin, the Organizer of Reformed Protestantism (1906); Emile Doumergue, Jean Calvin: les hommes et les choses de son temps, 4 vols. (1899-1910); L. Penning, Life and Times of Calvin, trans. from Dutch by B. S. Berrington (1912); William Barry, Calvin, in the "Catholic Encyclopædia." Many of Calvin's writings have been published in English translation by the "Presbyterian Board of Publication" in Philadelphia, 22 vols. in 52 (1844-1856), and his Institutes of the Christian Religion has several times been published in English. H. M. Baird, Theodore Beza (1899) is a popular biography of one of the best-known friends and associates of Calvin. For Calvinism in Switzerland: W. D. McCracken, The Rise of the Swiss Republic, 2d ed. (1901); F. W. Kampschulte, Johann Calvin, seine Kirche und sein Staat in Genf, 2 vols. (1869-1899). For Calvinism in France: H. M. Baird, History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France, 2 vols. (1879), and by the same author, a warm partisan of Calvinism, The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre, 2 vols. (1886); the brothers Haag, France protestante, 2d ed., 10 vols. (1877-1895), an exhaustive history of Protestantism in France; E. Lavisse (editor), Histoire de France, Vol. V, Livre IX, by Henry Lemonnier (1904), most recent and best. For Calvinism in Scotland: P. H. Brown, John Knox, a Biography, 2 vols. (1895); Andrew Lang, John Knox and the Reformation (1905); John Herkless and R. K. Hannay, The Archbishops of St. Andrews, 4 vols. (1907-1913); D. H. Fleming, The Reformation in Scotland: its Causes, Characteristics, and Consequences (1910); John Macpherson, History of the Church in Scotland (1901), ch. iii-v.

THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND. The eve of the revolution: Frederic Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers, 3d ed. (1887), a sympathetic treatment of Colet, Erasmus, and More; F. A. (Cardinal) Gasquet, The Eve of the Reformation in England (1899), and, by the same author, an eminent Catholic scholar, England under the Old Religion (1912). General histories of the English Reformation: H. O. Wakeman, An Introduction to the History of the Church of England, 8th ed. (1914), ch. x-xiv, the best brief "High Church" survey; J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, new illust. ed. by C. H. Firth (1913), ch. vi, vii, a popular "Low Church" view; W. R. W. Stephens and William Hunt (editors), A History of the Church of England, Vols. IV (1902) and V (1904) by James Gairdner and W. H. Frere respectively; James Gairdner, Lollardy and the Reformation in England, 4 vols. (1908- 1913), the last word of an eminent authority on the period, who was convinced of the revolutionary character of the English Reformation; John Lingard, History of England to 1688, Vols. IV-VI, the standard Roman Catholic work; R. W. Dixon, History of the Church of England from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction, 6 vols. (1878-1902), a thorough treatment from the High Anglican position; H. W. Clark, History of English Nonconformity, Vol. I (1911), Book I, valuable for the history of the radical Protestants; Henry Gee and W. J. Hardy, Documents Illustrative of English Church History (1896), an admirable collection of official pronouncements. Valuable special works and monographs: C. B. Lumsden, The Dawn of Modern England, being a History of the Reformation in England, 1509-1525 (1910), pronouncedly Roman Catholic in tone; Martin Hume, The Wives of Henry VIII (1905); F. A. (Cardinal) Gasquet, Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, 3d ed., 2 vols. (1888), popular ed. in 1 vol. (1902); R. B. Merriman, Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, 2 vols. (1902), a standard work; Dom Bede Camm, Lives of the English Martyrs (1904), with special reference to Roman Catholics under Henry VIII; A. F. Pollard, [Footnote: See also other works of A. F. Pollard listed in bibliography appended to Chapter III, p. 110, above.] Life of Cranmer (1904), scholarly and sympathetic, and, by the same author, England under Protector Somerset (1900), distinctly apologetic; Frances Rose-Troup, The Western Rebellion of 1549 (1913), a study of an unsuccessful popular uprising against religious innovations; M. J. Stone, Mary I, Queen of England (1901), an apology for Mary Tudor; John Foxe (1516-1587), Acts and Monuments of the Church, popularly known as the Book of Martyrs, the chief contemporary account of the Marian persecutions, uncritical and naturally strongly biased; R. G. Usher, The Reconstruction of the English Church, 2 vols. (1910), a popular account of the changes under Elizabeth and James I; H. N. Birt, The Elizabethan Religious Settlement (1907), from the Roman Catholic standpoint; G. E. Phillips, The Extinction of the Ancient Hierarchy, an Account of the Death in Prison of the Eleven Bishops Honored at Rome amongst the Martyrs of the Elizabethan Persecution (1905), also Roman Catholic; A. O. Meyer, England und die katholische Kirche unter Elisabeth und den Stuarts, Vol. I (1911), Eng. trans. by J. R. McKee (1915), based in part on use of source-material in the Vatican Library; Martin Hume, Treason and Plot (1901), deals with the struggles of the Roman Catholics for supremacy in the reign of Elizabeth; E. L. Taunton, The History of the Jesuits in England, 1580-1773 (1901); Richard Simpson, Life of Campion (1867), an account of a devoted Jesuit who suffered martyrdom under Elizabeth; Champlin Burrage, The Early English Dissenters in the Light of Recent Research, 1550-1641, 2 vols. (1912).

THE REFORMATION WITHIN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. Brief narratives: William Barry, The Papacy and Modern Times (1911), in "Home University Library," ch. i-iii; A. W. Ward, The Counter Reformation (1889) in "Epochs of Church History" Series; Cambridge Modern History, Vol. Ill (1905), ch. xiii by Ugo (Count) Balzani on "Rome under Sixtus V." Longer accounts: G. V. Jourdan, The Movement towards Catholic Reform in the Early Sixteenth Century, 1496-1536 (1914); K. W. Maurenbrecher, Geschichte der katholischen Reformation, Vol. I (1880), excellent down to 1534 but never completed; J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, Vols. VI and VII, The Catholic Reaction, replete with inaccuracy, bias, and prejudice. The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent have been translated by J. Waterworth, new ed. (1896), and the Catechism of the Council of Trent, by J. Donovan (1829). Nicholas Hilling, Procedure at the Roman Curia, 2d ed. (1909), contains a concise account of the "congregations" and other reformed agencies of administration introduced into church government in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The famous Autobiography of St. Ignatius Loyola has been trans. and ed. by J. F. X. O'Conor (1900), and the text of his Spiritual Exercises, trans. from Spanish into English, has been published by Joseph Rickaby (1915). See Stewart Rose (Lady Buchan), St. Ignatius Loyola and the Early Jesuits, ed. by W. H. Eyre (1891); Francis Thompson, Life of Saint Ignatius (1910); T. A. Hughes, Loyola and the Educational System of the Jesuits (1892). Monumental national histories of the Jesuits are now (1916) appearing under the auspices of the Order: for Germany, by Bernhard Duhr, Vol. I (1907), Vol. II (1913); for Italy, by Pietro Tacchi Venturi, Vol. I (1910); for France, by Henri Fouqueray, Vol. I (1910), Vol. II (1913); for Paraguay, by Pablo Pastells, Vol. I (1912); for North America, by Thomas Hughes, 3 vols. (1907-1910); for Spain, by Antonio Astrain, Vols. I-IV (1902-1913). Concerning the Index, see G. H. Putnam, The Censorship of the Church of Rome and its Influence upon the Production and Distribution of Literature, 2 vols. (1907). On the Inquisition, see H. C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain, 4 vols. (1907), and, by the same author, The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies (1908), on the whole a dark picture; and, for a Catholic account, Elphège Vacandard, The Inquisition: a Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church, trans. by B. L. Conway (1908).

FOR THE OUTCOME OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLT AND THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION FROM THE THEOLOGICAL STANDPOINT, see Adolph Harnack, History of Dogma, Eng. trans., Vol. VII (1900). Charles Beard, The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in its Relation to Modern Thought and Knowledge (1883) is a strongly Protestant estimate of the significance of the whole movement. J. Balmes, European Civilization: Protestantism and Catholicity Compared in their Effects on the Civilization of Europe (1850), though old, is a suggestive résumé from the Catholic standpoint.

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